Although strokes rarely occur
among women during pregnancy and just after birth, the rates of incidence have
made an alarming jump over the past decade. According to a study from the Heart
Disease and Stroke Prevention Division of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC), the number of stroke-related hospitalizations for new
moms and mothers-to-be has increased by a disturbing 54 percent in the last twelve
years. Details on the study were recently published in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.
While the total number of pregnancy-related
stroke hospitalizations recorded in America during the period from 1994 to 1995
was 4,085, the number soared to 6,293 for the period from 2006 to 2007.
Lead study author Elena
Kuklina, an epidemiologist at the CDC Division for Heart Disease and Stroke
Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, told AFP, “We were alarmed” by the study
results. She then added, “We expected to see some increase but we were
surprised by the amount.”
The study was based on the analysis of records from the Nationwide
Inpatient Sample, a database that includes from 5 million to 8 million
discharge records from 1,000 hospitals. During the study period, strokes were detected
in about 71 of every 100,000 delivery hospitalizations.
The findings showed that rate of stroke rose approximately 47 percent in
women prior to giving birth, and about 83 percent among new moms within twelve
weeks after giving birth. The most stroke-related hospitalizations occurred
among women aged 25 to 34.
Although the incidence of
stroke remains low among women in the U.S. who are pregnant or have given birth
within three months (only three-quarters of a percent), Kuklina noted that the
need for more research to determine the cause of the rising numbers is clear.
Little research has been done
on the issue to date due to the exclusion of pregnant women from many clinical
trials because of the potential for drugs to cause harm to the fetus. In the
search for published medical literature on the issue, Kuklina was only able to
find information on a mere eleven cases of pregnancy-related stroke.Source:healthnews
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