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Nearly 700 women died from pregnancy-related complications in the United States in 2018, and almost a third of those deaths were associated with cardiovascular disease, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Strikingly, studies suggest that up to half of cardiovascular disease–related maternal deaths are preventable, yet CVD remains the leading cause of maternal morbidity and mortality – and the incidence has been rising steadily for 2 decades.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says that acquired heart disease is the likely culprit in the rise in incidence of maternal mortality as women enter pregnancy with an increasingly heavy burden of CVD risk factors, including older age, obesity, diabetes, and hypertension.
“They are entering pregnancy while already at risk, and that has led to an increase in morbidity and mortality during pregnancy,” Renee Patrice Bullock-Palmer, MD, a cardiologist and director of the Women’s Heart Center at Deborah Heart and Lung Center in Browns Mills, N.J., explained in an interview. “Unfortunately, among developed countries, the U.S. has the highest rates of maternal morbidity and mortality, and that’s shocking.”
It’s a problem that requires collaboration between obstetricians, cardiologists, and others involved in the care of pregnant women, she said.
The data and the depth of the crisis
The maternal mortality rate in 1987 – the year the CDC’s Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System was implemented – was 7.2 per 100,000 live births. The rate in 2016 was more than double that at 16.9, and the rate in 2018, the most recent year for which data are available, was 17.4 – and significant racial and ethnic disparities in those rates have persisted over time.
In an August 2019 article published on the American Heart Association website, Dr. Bullock-Palmer addressed the cardiovascular state of health for pregnant women and the role of the cardiologists in their care, noting that there is a “role for increased collaboration between the cardiologist and the obstetrician with regards to a pregnancy heart team.”
“It is vital that mothers who are at increased risk for CVD or have established CVD be referred to a cardiologist for cardiovascular assessment and management,” she wrote, adding it is important to raise awareness among ob.gyns. and to improve cardiologists’ recognition of women at risk when they present for care for the first time.
These referrals should be made in the antepartum and early postpartum period, she said in an interview. More attention also must be paid to racial and ethnic disparities, and the role of cardiologists in addressing these disparities.
The CDC has emphasized racial and ethnic disparities in maternal mortality, noting in a 2019 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly report that, compared with white women, black and American Indian/Alaskan Native women aged over 30 years have a 300%-400% higher rate of pregnancy-related deaths (Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2019 Sep 6;68[35]:762-5).
With regard to disparities, Dr. Bullock-Palmer said the causes are multifold and may be related to a higher prevalence of CVD risk factors like obesity and hypertension in non-Hispanic black women.
“There may also be limited access to adequate postpartum care in this patient population,” she wrote, adding that some attention has been paid to addressing disparities, but that “there is a lot of work left to be done in resolving these inequities in maternal health care.”
Partnerships across specialties will help in addressing most of the factors associated with CVD and maternal death, she said.
The urgent need for these partnerships is underscored by the latest findings on CVD-related complications in pregnancy. A study published in March 2020 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, for example, looked specifically at the incidence of serious cardiac events (SCEs) in pregnant women with heart disease, and whether the events were preventable.
In a prospective cohort of 1,315 pregnancies among women with heart disease, Birgit Pfaller, MD, of the University of Toronto Pregnancy and Heart Disease Research Program, and colleagues found that SCEs occurred in 3.6% of cases (47 women) – most often during the antepartum period – that 49% were preventable, and that 74% were related to provider management factors.
The most common SCEs were cardiac death or arrest, heart failure, arrhythmias, and urgent intervention, and they were more likely to occur in women with acquired heart disease, severe aortic or mitral stenosis, mechanical valves, and systemic ventricular dysfunction. Adverse fetal and neonatal outcomes more than doubled in cases involving SCEs, compared with those without (62% vs. 29%), and adverse obstetric events occurred most often in women with severe preeclampsia.
“The majority of the preventable events occurred due to provider management factors, including: failure to identify the patient condition prior to pregnancy, failure to identify the patient as high risk, late recognition in cardiac deterioration, delay in treatment/intervention, inappropriate treatment, and lack of preconception counseling,” Melinda Davis, MD, of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, wrote in a summary and editorial published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Some preventable events were attributable to patient failure to seek care, noncompliance with care recommendations, and lack of access to care, Dr. Davis noted.
“These findings suggest that provider training, patient education, and health care advocacy are all important interventions to improve outcomes among pregnant women,” she wrote, adding that “the development of multidisciplinary cardio-obstetric clinics at tertiary care centers may also be helpful.”
Dr. Bullock-Palmer added the need for greater risk-prediction tools to the list, explaining that these are needed to assess CVD risk in the prenatal, antenatal, and postnatal period.
“The recently concluded Cardiac Disease in Pregnancy [CARPREG II] study indicated that there were 10 predictors that could be utilized to asses maternal CVD risk,” she noted.
The CARPREG II authors identified five general predictors (prior cardiac events or arrhythmias, poor functional class or cyanosis, high-risk valve disease/left ventricular outflow tract obstruction, systemic ventricular dysfunction, no prior cardiac interventions), four lesion-specific predictors (mechanical valves, high-risk aortopathies, pulmonary hypertension, coronary artery disease), and one delivery-of-care predictor (late pregnancy assessment), and incorporated them into a risk index.
“It is hopeful that these new initiatives will assist providers in improving their ability to appropriately risk stratify women,” Dr. Bullock-Palmer said.
Ongoing efforts
Efforts also are ongoing to develop the types of cardio-obstetric clinics mentioned by Dr. Davis and to establish collaborations and “pregnancy heart teams” as attention is increasingly focused on the U.S. maternal mortality crisis.
In fact, such teams are a cornerstone of ACOG’s guidance on pregnancy and heart disease. In May 2019 the college released a Practice Bulletin with 27 specific recommendations and conclusions relating to screening, diagnosis, and management of CVD for women during the prepregnancy period through the postpartum period.
Pregnant women and postpartum women with known or suspected CVD should undergo evaluation by a “pregnancy heart team that includes a cardiologist and maternal-fetal medicine subspecialist, or both, and other subspecialists as necessary,” according to the bulletin.
In a recent interview, Lisa Hollier, MD, immediate past president of ACOG and an instrumental figure in the push to better address maternal mortality – and in particular the cardiovascular contributors to the crisis – said she is “seeing a strengthening of that” with numerous organizations establishing pregnancy health teams.
Dr. Bullock-Palmer said she also is seeing progress, and added that collaboration should be prioritized even in the absence of dedicated pregnancy heart teams and clinics.
“Heart disease in pregnancy requires a multidisciplinary approach. You can’t just see the patient from the cardiac perspective – you also have to interact and team up with the obstetrician who is handling the pregnancy,” she said, adding that, without a dedicated team, coordination takes more effort, but is imperative for improving outcomes. “You have to collaborate at times when it is beyond the expertise of the institution or the physician; you have to know when to refer these higher-risk patients, particularly women with adult congenital heart disease.”
This referral should occur early – preferably in the antenatal period, she added.
The most important thing, however, is “recognizing these women ... even before the pregnancy,” Dr. Bullock-Palmer said, explaining that this can facilitate the necessary management – and in some cases, postponement – of pregnancy for women whose cardiac issues need to be addressed first.
Among other efforts to address maternal mortality are several programs developed by ACOG, and the Heart Outcomes in Pregnancy: Expectations for Mom and Baby Registry (HOPE) project of the Saint Luke’s Health System in Kansas.
“Hopefully the [HOPE] research collaborative ... which aims to address key clinical questions surrounding the preconception period, antenatal care, delivery planning and outcomes, and long-term postpartum care and outcomes of women will help to address the knowledge gaps and disparities in the care of women with heart disease in pregnancy,” Dr. Bullock-Palmer wrote in her article.
CVD-related risks in the post partum
Dr. Bullock-Palmer has particular concern for postpartum follow-up, given the increased risk for future heart disease among women with CVD-related pregnancy complications and the heightened risk of certain CVD-related events in the postpartum period.
That’s a component of the crisis that also was addressed during a press briefing at the 2019 ACOG annual meeting when the Pregnancy and Heart Disease Practice Bulletin was released.
James Martin, MD, chair of ACOG’s Pregnancy and Heart Disease Task Force and a past ACOG president, explained during the briefing that CVD-related risks may accelerate and persist in the days and weeks after delivery, underscoring the need for follow-up and postpartum care.
Cardiomyopathy is a particular concern during this time – it’s the major cause of maternal mortality after 42 days, he noted. An emphasis on postpartum care also is especially important given that some data suggest up to 40% of women don’t return for that care.
“That is a very sad statistic and perhaps it reflects on our need to change payment models so that physicians and patients realize the importance of coming back for continuing care, because this really may be the end of pregnancy, but it is the beginning of the rest of their life,” he said. “And if they have cardiovascular disease or the risk factors ... they are going to possibly become worse over the course of their lifetime.”
Nearly 700 women died from pregnancy-related complications in the United States in 2018, and almost a third of those deaths were associated with cardiovascular disease, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Strikingly, studies suggest that up to half of cardiovascular disease–related maternal deaths are preventable, yet CVD remains the leading cause of maternal morbidity and mortality – and the incidence has been rising steadily for 2 decades.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says that acquired heart disease is the likely culprit in the rise in incidence of maternal mortality as women enter pregnancy with an increasingly heavy burden of CVD risk factors, including older age, obesity, diabetes, and hypertension.
“They are entering pregnancy while already at risk, and that has led to an increase in morbidity and mortality during pregnancy,” Renee Patrice Bullock-Palmer, MD, a cardiologist and director of the Women’s Heart Center at Deborah Heart and Lung Center in Browns Mills, N.J., explained in an interview. “Unfortunately, among developed countries, the U.S. has the highest rates of maternal morbidity and mortality, and that’s shocking.”
It’s a problem that requires collaboration between obstetricians, cardiologists, and others involved in the care of pregnant women, she said.
The data and the depth of the crisis
The maternal mortality rate in 1987 – the year the CDC’s Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System was implemented – was 7.2 per 100,000 live births. The rate in 2016 was more than double that at 16.9, and the rate in 2018, the most recent year for which data are available, was 17.4 – and significant racial and ethnic disparities in those rates have persisted over time.
In an August 2019 article published on the American Heart Association website, Dr. Bullock-Palmer addressed the cardiovascular state of health for pregnant women and the role of the cardiologists in their care, noting that there is a “role for increased collaboration between the cardiologist and the obstetrician with regards to a pregnancy heart team.”
“It is vital that mothers who are at increased risk for CVD or have established CVD be referred to a cardiologist for cardiovascular assessment and management,” she wrote, adding it is important to raise awareness among ob.gyns. and to improve cardiologists’ recognition of women at risk when they present for care for the first time.
These referrals should be made in the antepartum and early postpartum period, she said in an interview. More attention also must be paid to racial and ethnic disparities, and the role of cardiologists in addressing these disparities.
The CDC has emphasized racial and ethnic disparities in maternal mortality, noting in a 2019 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly report that, compared with white women, black and American Indian/Alaskan Native women aged over 30 years have a 300%-400% higher rate of pregnancy-related deaths (Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2019 Sep 6;68[35]:762-5).
With regard to disparities, Dr. Bullock-Palmer said the causes are multifold and may be related to a higher prevalence of CVD risk factors like obesity and hypertension in non-Hispanic black women.
“There may also be limited access to adequate postpartum care in this patient population,” she wrote, adding that some attention has been paid to addressing disparities, but that “there is a lot of work left to be done in resolving these inequities in maternal health care.”
Partnerships across specialties will help in addressing most of the factors associated with CVD and maternal death, she said.
The urgent need for these partnerships is underscored by the latest findings on CVD-related complications in pregnancy. A study published in March 2020 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, for example, looked specifically at the incidence of serious cardiac events (SCEs) in pregnant women with heart disease, and whether the events were preventable.
In a prospective cohort of 1,315 pregnancies among women with heart disease, Birgit Pfaller, MD, of the University of Toronto Pregnancy and Heart Disease Research Program, and colleagues found that SCEs occurred in 3.6% of cases (47 women) – most often during the antepartum period – that 49% were preventable, and that 74% were related to provider management factors.
The most common SCEs were cardiac death or arrest, heart failure, arrhythmias, and urgent intervention, and they were more likely to occur in women with acquired heart disease, severe aortic or mitral stenosis, mechanical valves, and systemic ventricular dysfunction. Adverse fetal and neonatal outcomes more than doubled in cases involving SCEs, compared with those without (62% vs. 29%), and adverse obstetric events occurred most often in women with severe preeclampsia.
“The majority of the preventable events occurred due to provider management factors, including: failure to identify the patient condition prior to pregnancy, failure to identify the patient as high risk, late recognition in cardiac deterioration, delay in treatment/intervention, inappropriate treatment, and lack of preconception counseling,” Melinda Davis, MD, of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, wrote in a summary and editorial published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Some preventable events were attributable to patient failure to seek care, noncompliance with care recommendations, and lack of access to care, Dr. Davis noted.
“These findings suggest that provider training, patient education, and health care advocacy are all important interventions to improve outcomes among pregnant women,” she wrote, adding that “the development of multidisciplinary cardio-obstetric clinics at tertiary care centers may also be helpful.”
Dr. Bullock-Palmer added the need for greater risk-prediction tools to the list, explaining that these are needed to assess CVD risk in the prenatal, antenatal, and postnatal period.
“The recently concluded Cardiac Disease in Pregnancy [CARPREG II] study indicated that there were 10 predictors that could be utilized to asses maternal CVD risk,” she noted.
The CARPREG II authors identified five general predictors (prior cardiac events or arrhythmias, poor functional class or cyanosis, high-risk valve disease/left ventricular outflow tract obstruction, systemic ventricular dysfunction, no prior cardiac interventions), four lesion-specific predictors (mechanical valves, high-risk aortopathies, pulmonary hypertension, coronary artery disease), and one delivery-of-care predictor (late pregnancy assessment), and incorporated them into a risk index.
“It is hopeful that these new initiatives will assist providers in improving their ability to appropriately risk stratify women,” Dr. Bullock-Palmer said.
Ongoing efforts
Efforts also are ongoing to develop the types of cardio-obstetric clinics mentioned by Dr. Davis and to establish collaborations and “pregnancy heart teams” as attention is increasingly focused on the U.S. maternal mortality crisis.
In fact, such teams are a cornerstone of ACOG’s guidance on pregnancy and heart disease. In May 2019 the college released a Practice Bulletin with 27 specific recommendations and conclusions relating to screening, diagnosis, and management of CVD for women during the prepregnancy period through the postpartum period.
Pregnant women and postpartum women with known or suspected CVD should undergo evaluation by a “pregnancy heart team that includes a cardiologist and maternal-fetal medicine subspecialist, or both, and other subspecialists as necessary,” according to the bulletin.
In a recent interview, Lisa Hollier, MD, immediate past president of ACOG and an instrumental figure in the push to better address maternal mortality – and in particular the cardiovascular contributors to the crisis – said she is “seeing a strengthening of that” with numerous organizations establishing pregnancy health teams.
Dr. Bullock-Palmer said she also is seeing progress, and added that collaboration should be prioritized even in the absence of dedicated pregnancy heart teams and clinics.
“Heart disease in pregnancy requires a multidisciplinary approach. You can’t just see the patient from the cardiac perspective – you also have to interact and team up with the obstetrician who is handling the pregnancy,” she said, adding that, without a dedicated team, coordination takes more effort, but is imperative for improving outcomes. “You have to collaborate at times when it is beyond the expertise of the institution or the physician; you have to know when to refer these higher-risk patients, particularly women with adult congenital heart disease.”
This referral should occur early – preferably in the antenatal period, she added.
The most important thing, however, is “recognizing these women ... even before the pregnancy,” Dr. Bullock-Palmer said, explaining that this can facilitate the necessary management – and in some cases, postponement – of pregnancy for women whose cardiac issues need to be addressed first.
Among other efforts to address maternal mortality are several programs developed by ACOG, and the Heart Outcomes in Pregnancy: Expectations for Mom and Baby Registry (HOPE) project of the Saint Luke’s Health System in Kansas.
“Hopefully the [HOPE] research collaborative ... which aims to address key clinical questions surrounding the preconception period, antenatal care, delivery planning and outcomes, and long-term postpartum care and outcomes of women will help to address the knowledge gaps and disparities in the care of women with heart disease in pregnancy,” Dr. Bullock-Palmer wrote in her article.
CVD-related risks in the post partum
Dr. Bullock-Palmer has particular concern for postpartum follow-up, given the increased risk for future heart disease among women with CVD-related pregnancy complications and the heightened risk of certain CVD-related events in the postpartum period.
That’s a component of the crisis that also was addressed during a press briefing at the 2019 ACOG annual meeting when the Pregnancy and Heart Disease Practice Bulletin was released.
James Martin, MD, chair of ACOG’s Pregnancy and Heart Disease Task Force and a past ACOG president, explained during the briefing that CVD-related risks may accelerate and persist in the days and weeks after delivery, underscoring the need for follow-up and postpartum care.
Cardiomyopathy is a particular concern during this time – it’s the major cause of maternal mortality after 42 days, he noted. An emphasis on postpartum care also is especially important given that some data suggest up to 40% of women don’t return for that care.
“That is a very sad statistic and perhaps it reflects on our need to change payment models so that physicians and patients realize the importance of coming back for continuing care, because this really may be the end of pregnancy, but it is the beginning of the rest of their life,” he said. “And if they have cardiovascular disease or the risk factors ... they are going to possibly become worse over the course of their lifetime.”
Nearly 700 women died from pregnancy-related complications in the United States in 2018, and almost a third of those deaths were associated with cardiovascular disease, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Strikingly, studies suggest that up to half of cardiovascular disease–related maternal deaths are preventable, yet CVD remains the leading cause of maternal morbidity and mortality – and the incidence has been rising steadily for 2 decades.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says that acquired heart disease is the likely culprit in the rise in incidence of maternal mortality as women enter pregnancy with an increasingly heavy burden of CVD risk factors, including older age, obesity, diabetes, and hypertension.
“They are entering pregnancy while already at risk, and that has led to an increase in morbidity and mortality during pregnancy,” Renee Patrice Bullock-Palmer, MD, a cardiologist and director of the Women’s Heart Center at Deborah Heart and Lung Center in Browns Mills, N.J., explained in an interview. “Unfortunately, among developed countries, the U.S. has the highest rates of maternal morbidity and mortality, and that’s shocking.”
It’s a problem that requires collaboration between obstetricians, cardiologists, and others involved in the care of pregnant women, she said.
The data and the depth of the crisis
The maternal mortality rate in 1987 – the year the CDC’s Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System was implemented – was 7.2 per 100,000 live births. The rate in 2016 was more than double that at 16.9, and the rate in 2018, the most recent year for which data are available, was 17.4 – and significant racial and ethnic disparities in those rates have persisted over time.
In an August 2019 article published on the American Heart Association website, Dr. Bullock-Palmer addressed the cardiovascular state of health for pregnant women and the role of the cardiologists in their care, noting that there is a “role for increased collaboration between the cardiologist and the obstetrician with regards to a pregnancy heart team.”
“It is vital that mothers who are at increased risk for CVD or have established CVD be referred to a cardiologist for cardiovascular assessment and management,” she wrote, adding it is important to raise awareness among ob.gyns. and to improve cardiologists’ recognition of women at risk when they present for care for the first time.
These referrals should be made in the antepartum and early postpartum period, she said in an interview. More attention also must be paid to racial and ethnic disparities, and the role of cardiologists in addressing these disparities.
The CDC has emphasized racial and ethnic disparities in maternal mortality, noting in a 2019 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly report that, compared with white women, black and American Indian/Alaskan Native women aged over 30 years have a 300%-400% higher rate of pregnancy-related deaths (Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2019 Sep 6;68[35]:762-5).
With regard to disparities, Dr. Bullock-Palmer said the causes are multifold and may be related to a higher prevalence of CVD risk factors like obesity and hypertension in non-Hispanic black women.
“There may also be limited access to adequate postpartum care in this patient population,” she wrote, adding that some attention has been paid to addressing disparities, but that “there is a lot of work left to be done in resolving these inequities in maternal health care.”
Partnerships across specialties will help in addressing most of the factors associated with CVD and maternal death, she said.
The urgent need for these partnerships is underscored by the latest findings on CVD-related complications in pregnancy. A study published in March 2020 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, for example, looked specifically at the incidence of serious cardiac events (SCEs) in pregnant women with heart disease, and whether the events were preventable.
In a prospective cohort of 1,315 pregnancies among women with heart disease, Birgit Pfaller, MD, of the University of Toronto Pregnancy and Heart Disease Research Program, and colleagues found that SCEs occurred in 3.6% of cases (47 women) – most often during the antepartum period – that 49% were preventable, and that 74% were related to provider management factors.
The most common SCEs were cardiac death or arrest, heart failure, arrhythmias, and urgent intervention, and they were more likely to occur in women with acquired heart disease, severe aortic or mitral stenosis, mechanical valves, and systemic ventricular dysfunction. Adverse fetal and neonatal outcomes more than doubled in cases involving SCEs, compared with those without (62% vs. 29%), and adverse obstetric events occurred most often in women with severe preeclampsia.
“The majority of the preventable events occurred due to provider management factors, including: failure to identify the patient condition prior to pregnancy, failure to identify the patient as high risk, late recognition in cardiac deterioration, delay in treatment/intervention, inappropriate treatment, and lack of preconception counseling,” Melinda Davis, MD, of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, wrote in a summary and editorial published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Some preventable events were attributable to patient failure to seek care, noncompliance with care recommendations, and lack of access to care, Dr. Davis noted.
“These findings suggest that provider training, patient education, and health care advocacy are all important interventions to improve outcomes among pregnant women,” she wrote, adding that “the development of multidisciplinary cardio-obstetric clinics at tertiary care centers may also be helpful.”
Dr. Bullock-Palmer added the need for greater risk-prediction tools to the list, explaining that these are needed to assess CVD risk in the prenatal, antenatal, and postnatal period.
“The recently concluded Cardiac Disease in Pregnancy [CARPREG II] study indicated that there were 10 predictors that could be utilized to asses maternal CVD risk,” she noted.
The CARPREG II authors identified five general predictors (prior cardiac events or arrhythmias, poor functional class or cyanosis, high-risk valve disease/left ventricular outflow tract obstruction, systemic ventricular dysfunction, no prior cardiac interventions), four lesion-specific predictors (mechanical valves, high-risk aortopathies, pulmonary hypertension, coronary artery disease), and one delivery-of-care predictor (late pregnancy assessment), and incorporated them into a risk index.
“It is hopeful that these new initiatives will assist providers in improving their ability to appropriately risk stratify women,” Dr. Bullock-Palmer said.
Ongoing efforts
Efforts also are ongoing to develop the types of cardio-obstetric clinics mentioned by Dr. Davis and to establish collaborations and “pregnancy heart teams” as attention is increasingly focused on the U.S. maternal mortality crisis.
In fact, such teams are a cornerstone of ACOG’s guidance on pregnancy and heart disease. In May 2019 the college released a Practice Bulletin with 27 specific recommendations and conclusions relating to screening, diagnosis, and management of CVD for women during the prepregnancy period through the postpartum period.
Pregnant women and postpartum women with known or suspected CVD should undergo evaluation by a “pregnancy heart team that includes a cardiologist and maternal-fetal medicine subspecialist, or both, and other subspecialists as necessary,” according to the bulletin.
In a recent interview, Lisa Hollier, MD, immediate past president of ACOG and an instrumental figure in the push to better address maternal mortality – and in particular the cardiovascular contributors to the crisis – said she is “seeing a strengthening of that” with numerous organizations establishing pregnancy health teams.
Dr. Bullock-Palmer said she also is seeing progress, and added that collaboration should be prioritized even in the absence of dedicated pregnancy heart teams and clinics.
“Heart disease in pregnancy requires a multidisciplinary approach. You can’t just see the patient from the cardiac perspective – you also have to interact and team up with the obstetrician who is handling the pregnancy,” she said, adding that, without a dedicated team, coordination takes more effort, but is imperative for improving outcomes. “You have to collaborate at times when it is beyond the expertise of the institution or the physician; you have to know when to refer these higher-risk patients, particularly women with adult congenital heart disease.”
This referral should occur early – preferably in the antenatal period, she added.
The most important thing, however, is “recognizing these women ... even before the pregnancy,” Dr. Bullock-Palmer said, explaining that this can facilitate the necessary management – and in some cases, postponement – of pregnancy for women whose cardiac issues need to be addressed first.
Among other efforts to address maternal mortality are several programs developed by ACOG, and the Heart Outcomes in Pregnancy: Expectations for Mom and Baby Registry (HOPE) project of the Saint Luke’s Health System in Kansas.
“Hopefully the [HOPE] research collaborative ... which aims to address key clinical questions surrounding the preconception period, antenatal care, delivery planning and outcomes, and long-term postpartum care and outcomes of women will help to address the knowledge gaps and disparities in the care of women with heart disease in pregnancy,” Dr. Bullock-Palmer wrote in her article.
CVD-related risks in the post partum
Dr. Bullock-Palmer has particular concern for postpartum follow-up, given the increased risk for future heart disease among women with CVD-related pregnancy complications and the heightened risk of certain CVD-related events in the postpartum period.
That’s a component of the crisis that also was addressed during a press briefing at the 2019 ACOG annual meeting when the Pregnancy and Heart Disease Practice Bulletin was released.
James Martin, MD, chair of ACOG’s Pregnancy and Heart Disease Task Force and a past ACOG president, explained during the briefing that CVD-related risks may accelerate and persist in the days and weeks after delivery, underscoring the need for follow-up and postpartum care.
Cardiomyopathy is a particular concern during this time – it’s the major cause of maternal mortality after 42 days, he noted. An emphasis on postpartum care also is especially important given that some data suggest up to 40% of women don’t return for that care.
“That is a very sad statistic and perhaps it reflects on our need to change payment models so that physicians and patients realize the importance of coming back for continuing care, because this really may be the end of pregnancy, but it is the beginning of the rest of their life,” he said. “And if they have cardiovascular disease or the risk factors ... they are going to possibly become worse over the course of their lifetime.”