Introduction: From early pregnancy, maternal hemodynamic profile begins to change. The absence of these changes leads to increased risk of complication during the gestation.
Objectives: Aim of this study is to understand in early pregnancy the behaviour of total vascular resistances (TVR) as a sign of maternal cardiovascular adaptation to pregnancy.
Method: A cross section study was conducted. We followed 160 healthy women with singleton pregnancy during the first trimester of gestation. We evaluated cardiac output (CO) and TVR at 7, 9 and 11 weeks of gestation. We obtained the following haemodynamic measurements with the USCOM system, a non invasive method: heart rate (HR), systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP, DBP), CO and TVR.
Results: 160 healthy pregnant women were selected, 8 patients, were excluded for a bad signal. Absolute values of the haemodynamic measures are shown in Fig. 1. 41 patients underwent spontaneous embryonic demise. This last group of patients showed in 54% (group A) TVR values within the normal limits (TVR<1200), while 46% patients (group B) showed TVR values well above the normal limits (TVR>1200) and CO values below the normal adaptation to pregnancy. Table 1 shows hemodynamic measures for the group A and group B; we found differences in term of CO, TVR and PAS between the two groups.
Conclusion: Elevated TVR might indicate an abnormal vascular adaptation already in first weeks of pregnancy. Moreover, in women who undergo to abortion, elevated TVR could be use to distinguish genetic or environmental causes of miscarriage.
Copyright © 2013. Published by Elsevier B.V.