New research showing that a mother's high blood pressure during pregnancy may have a greater risk of low birth weight or has 70 percent would more likely to have a stillbirth.
"Working as a clinical doctor in obstetrics, I often meet women with 'borderline high blood pressure' and I wanted to find out if they had increased risks of adverse fetal outcomes," Dr.Anna-Karin Wikstrom, the lead author of the study and an associate professor of obstetrics at Uppsala University in Sweden, said.
The Medical Daily reports that the researchers examined the records of over 150,000 pregnant women in between 2008 and 2014. They assessed the blood pressure readings of the women received before 20 weeks of their pregnancies and 34 weeks when they delivered.
The outcome shows that about 11 percent of the participants had prehypertension. This happened in the early stages of high blood pressure. After the participants gave birth, the researchers found out that there were 2,416 babies who were born underweight and 194 were the stillbirth.
According to American Heart Association, the blood pressure is recorded as the systolic which is the top number and the diastolic, which is the bottom number. The systolic gauges the pressure in the arteries when the heart muscle contracts or when the heart beats. Meanwhile, the diastolic gauges the pressure in the arteries between heartbeats.
The normal blood pressure must be less than 120 systolic and less than 80 diastolic (120/80 mm Hg) for 20 years old and above. Your blood pressure is high if you reach 140 or higher systolic and 90 or higher diastolic. Adults who have systolic higher than 180 and diastolic higher than 110 are in Hypertensive Crisis and need an emergency care.
According to the survey, there are about one in three adults who have hypertension in the U.S. The American Heart Association advises adults to have a blood pressure screening once every two years.
