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Course: Health and medicine > Unit 12
Lesson 4: Pregnancy complicationsPreeclampsia
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Want to join the conversation?
- Can a woman spot proteinuria just by appearence of the urine?(3 votes)
- Well usually if someone has protein in their urine in high amounts, their urine is going to be unusually frothy. Yet just because you have frothy urine doesn't necessarily mean that it's proteinuria, there are proteins that can be in the in the urine regularly that may cause the urine to be frothy. Also, it may be caused by certain drugs or high amounts of conjugated bilirubin excreted in the urine.
So, you may be able to spot proteinuria based on abnormally high amounts of froth in the urine, but there can be other factors that are causing the urine to be frothy that could point to something else.(7 votes)
- Do you refer to Epilepsi when you say Seizures ?(2 votes)
- Not always.
Seizures is just the loss of consciousness and muscle spasms. It can be caused by several things, like very low blood sugar or epilepsy.
Epilepsy is the most known cause for seizures happening again and again in the same person.(3 votes)
- after preeclampsia or eclampsia what happens next pregnancy(2 votes)
- Preeclampsia is a condition that only occurs in pregnancy, and causes high blood pressure. ... It can also lead to a condition called eclampsia, which can cause seizures in the mother and is the second leading cause of maternal death. hope this help.(2 votes)
- Is there any research available about the possibility of a connection with preeclampsia and tyramine in your diet? Tyramine is a known vasoconstrictor and is found in coffee, wine, organ meats, etc. I wonder if you can help women with preeclampsia by going on a strict Tyramine free diet, like the diets that you would have to be on for someone taking a MAOI?(2 votes)
- You had me impressed with a cogent, accurate, succinct description, right up untilwhen you uttered the greatest myth of preeclampsia. Delivery is NOT always the cure, as evidenced by the high number of maternal mortalities that occur postpartum, some weeks later. Please update this presentation so that new med students don't take that myth into clinical settings. Very dangerous! 11:37
Also, what are those "factors" you mention at? Given the greater attention to research in this area and needing a better treatment then delivery, those "factors" get a lot of attention. Lab tests are starting to use them to screen or diagnose preeclampsia. 6:32(0 votes)- Delivery is ALWAYS the cure for preeclampsia. The damage preeclampsia causes doesn't resolve immediately after the delivery of the placenta. Some symptoms like headaches can resolve hours after delivery, while something like proteinuria may take weeks or months to resolve. That is why I believe you are trying to say delivery is not always the cure because women can have preeclampsia postpartum. In some instances preeclampsia may have developed very late into the pregnancy or around intrapartum so it was not diagnosed as preeclampsia. These women subsequently develop complications postpartum. However, delivery of the placenta is nonetheless the cure, and clinicians still need to be mindful that it may take weeks to months to recover completely.
I hope this helps!(5 votes)
- can you guys explain seizures and why they occur outside of pregnancy? 3:58(2 votes)
- A seizure can also be caused by brain infection, a tumor, a stroke, or anything that causes electric activity in the brain that is not normal.(1 vote)
- What causes the liver enzymes to be elevated? Is it because edema in the liver damages hepatocytes and releases the enzymes?(1 vote)
- Good thinking. Liver enzymes are elevated in the blood because hepatocytes become damaged or destroyed and contents inside the cell end up outside of the cell in the blood. The liver gets first pass of all things we eat and drink so there are many things that can damage liver cells including alcohol, various drugs that the liver metabolizes, several types of viral hepatitis, autoimmune hepatitis, bacterial hepatitis, portal vein hypertension, as well as other causes.
https://www.merckmanuals.com/home/liver-and-gallbladder-disorders/manifestations-of-liver-disease/overview-of-liver-disease(2 votes)
- High blood pressure causes seizure?(1 vote)
- A physiologic non-epileptic seizure can be triggered by some sort of change in the brain — typically a change in the supply of blood or oxygen rather than electrical activity. Some possible causes of physiologic non-epileptic seizures include: Rapid drop in blood pressure. Low blood sugar levels.(1 vote)
- Is Toxemia the same thing as Preeclampsia?
Thank you(1 vote)- No; toxemia is the presence of toxins in the blood.
It is an outdated, inaccurate term for pre-eclampsia which is no longer used.(2 votes)
- Hi, thanks so much for this video. I was wondering what factors are released by the placenta that cause damage to the endothelium cells? Also what factors are released by the endothelium cells that promote clotting?(1 vote)
Video transcript
- [Voiceover] Okay, so I want
to start off with a scale. So this is a scale, a time scale. And on this end is before pregnancy, and on this end is after pregnancy, and then in the middle is the
20-week point of pregnancy. And I want to use this scale
to show you how different pregnancy related hypertensive
disorders are split, because they're split up according to when the hypertension occurs and also according to how severe it is. So starting on this end, let's say a woman has had high blood
pressure for several years before she became pregnant, or if she's found out to
have high blood pressure before 20 weeks into her pregnancy, then we say that she has chronic, she has chronic or preexisting, chronic or preexisting hypertension. So, her hypertension has
nothing to do with pregnancy, because she either had it
before she became pregnant, or before the 20-week
point into her pregnancy. And this 20-week point
is important because before it, sort of in the
early stages of pregnancy, pregnancy reduces blood pressure. So if a woman is hypertensive
before the 20-week point, then the cause of her
hypertension has nothing to do with the pregnancy. Now, if instead she's found
to have high blood pressure after the 20-week point in her pregnancy, we say that she has gestational, she has gestational hypertension. I'm just gonna abbreviate
hypertension as HTN throughout this video,
I'll save a lot of time. Or, hypertension related to her pregnancy, that's what gestational hypertension is. And typically, gestational
hypertension, usually, should resolve within 12
weeks of giving birth. If it doesn't, then
chances are that the woman probably had high blood pressure before ever becoming pregnant,
but that we didn't find it in the earlier stages
of pregnancy because of that physiologic lowering
of blood pressure that we were talking about that occurs early on in pregnancy. So, I guess you can say
that these two conditions, chronic hypertension and
gestational hypertension, are sort of the milder
forms of hypertension. So now let's talk about the more serious hypertensive disorders,
which would have to be preeclampsia. Preeclampsia. Which is kinda spelled weird, preeclampsia and eclampsia. Preeclampsia and eclampsia. So preeclampsia refers
to when a woman develops high blood pressure after
20-weeks into the pregnancy. So kinda just like
gestational hypertension, but along with a few other features. So in addition to the high blood pressure, there's also protein
spilling into the urine, or proteinuria. Proteinuria. So protein in the urine. Or, there's some other
form of end organ damage. And I'm gonna go through
exactly what that means in just a bit, but
there is some other form of end organ damage. Okay, so preeclampsia
refers to this constellation of high blood pressure,
proteinuria, and end organ damage. And eclampsia is when a
woman with preeclampsia develops seizures. Alright, so when a woman with preeclampsia develops seizures,
that's called eclampsia. Alright. So it's all good to know the
definition of preeclampsia, but why does it happen in the first place? Well, for as much as we don't
know about this disease, we're pretty certain that
a lot of it has to do with the abnormal development
of the blood vessels of the placenta early on in
the course of the pregnancy. So the blood vessels in the placenta just don't develop correctly. Now if you remember, during
the formation of the placenta, the trophoblast cells of the embryo, which this is the embryo
and these green cells on the outside are the trophoblast. The trophoblast invade
through the decidua, which is what the endometrium is called during pregnancy. And they also invade through
part of the myometrium. And they do this, the trophoblast invade through the decidua so
that they can access and infiltrate the spiral arteries, which are the terminal
branches of the uterine artery. So they're the arteries
that supply the uterus. So they infiltrate the
spiral arteries to get access to all of that oxygenated
blood that's inside them. And that's how the placenta
forms into this bed where blood exchange between
mom and fetus can occur. It's because of this first
step of the trophoblast invading into the spiral arteries. Now in order for this
to happen successfully, I guess you could say two things
really have to take place. Two things have to happen. Firstly, the trophoblast
have to be pretty aggressive in their infiltration, they really have to dig into the decidua. And secondly, the spiral arteries have to remodel themselves. They have to go from being these narrow, thick-walled
blood vessels to sort of being these large, kind of
tortuous, vascular channels that allow a large amount of
blood to flow through them. So both things have to happen. And we think that preeclampsia occurs when they don't. So the trophoblast do a bad job of digging into the decidua
and the spiral arteries just don't change enough to allow for the increased blood flow. So let's sort of take a step back and look at the big picture. If the placenta can't gain good access to the spiral arteries, what that means is a poor oxygen supply to the placenta, which becomes more and more of an issue as the woman gets further
into her pregnancy and the fetus and the
placenta require increasing amounts of blood and oxygen. So the shortage in oxygen supply makes the surrounding cells
of the placenta really angry. That's a really common
theme in the human body. When cells don't get enough
oxygen, they get angry and they release molecules,
usually inflammatory molecules. And that's exactly what happens here. The placenta releases several factors that enter mom's bloodstream. And the factors start altering the way her circulatory system works, specifically the factors start damaging the cells that line the inside of the blood vessels, the endothelial cells. So if this is a blood vessel, we're looking at it head on, it's a cross-section of a blood vessel, we're talking about these
cells on the inside. These really thin cells
called the endothelial cells that line the inside of the blood vessels. These cells are the
target of those factors that are released by the placenta. These are the cells that get damaged. And the damage of the endothelial cells leads to those characteristic
signs and symptoms of preeclampsia. So, for example, when the
endothelial cells are damaged, they lose the ability to control the tone of the blood vessels. So it becomes harder for
the blood vessels to relax and that's what leads to
the high blood pressure. The blood vessels aren't able to relax, that's why you end up with hypertension. And the factors released by the placenta also cause the endothelial
cells to become more leaky. And these leaky blood
vessels allow protein to escape from them. And so when that leakiness occurs in the blood vessels of
the kidney, let's say, and protein leaks out from
the glomerular capillaries, you end up with protein in
your urine, or proteinuria, which is one of the
hallmarks of preeclampsia. And throughout the rest of the body, when protein escapes
from the blood vessels into the surrounding tissues, right? And if you remember anything
about Starling's forces, I know I'm asking you to dig
pretty deep with this one, you'll remember that wherever
protein goes, water goes. So water follows the
protein into the tissues and you end up with edema or swelling throughout the body. So swelling in the face and the hands, and really swelling
outside of what you see in normal pregnancy. And the blood vessels
in pretty much any organ can be affected, leading to
whole body signs and symptoms. So, for example, you can have headaches, you can see headaches, seizures. You can see headaches, seizures, and also visual symptoms. So you can see visual symptoms from the dysfunction of the
blood vessels in the brain. You can also have epigastric pain, so pain in kind of that upper
middle region of the belly, and elevated liver enzymes. Elevated liver enzymes from
dysfunction of the liver. And you can also have
fetal growth restriction, so the fetus isn't growing enough from dysfunction of the blood vessels in the placenta. So that's what I meant by organ damage in the beginning of this video. Also, another key point
that I'd like to make is that the endothelial
cells, when they're damaged, they can release their own factors. So, the factors they
release promote clotting, leading to clots
throughout the entire body. And as you can imagine,
that becomes its own separate, huge issue. Now, the diagnosis of
preeclampsia involves looking for all of these features
that I just talked about. So in order to make the diagnosis, a woman needs to have high blood pressure, so a systolic blood
pressure of more than 140, a diastolic blood pressure more than 90. That's the general
definition of hypertension. And she has to have one
of the following criteria. She either has to have
evidence of proteinuria or she has to have some
evidence of end organ damage. So she could have elevated liver enzymes that indicate liver dysfunction, or she could have an increased creatinine, which alludes to kidney damage. Or decreased platelets,
which hint clot formation. Any sign of end organ damage
will make this diagnosis. And if you've ever spent much time on a ob/gyn floor in a hospital, you know that we screen for this disorder pretty aggressively because preeclampsia can have some really
serious complications. It can lead to placental abruption. It can lead to a liver
hematoma or rupture. It can also lead to something called disseminated intravascular coagulation, which really just refers to clots forming in the vessels all throughout the body. It can also lead to stroke
and even lead to the need for mechanical ventilation. So it's a really serious, it can be a really serious disorder. So how do you cure this
seemingly serious disease? Well, really delivery is the only cure. Which makes sense, since the placenta is the source of all of these factors that are damaging mom's vascular system. So removal of the placenta
should cure the diesease and it does. Delivery of the placenta always results in complete resolution
of the signs and symptoms of preeclampsia. Now of course it's important to consider whether the fetus is mature enough to survive the delivery. So for that reason, if
a woman is past 37 weeks into her pregnancy,
then we usually procede with delivery if the mom has preeclampsia, regardless of how severe it is. If the pregnancy, however,
has not yet reached 37 weeks, then we usually only deliver if the preeclampsia is severe. Now one last point that I'd like to make, eclampsia, or seizures in a
woman who has preeclampsia, is one of the most feared complications of preeclampsia and the
greatest risk for eclampsia is just before delivery, during labor, and 24 hours after delivery. So for that reason, every
woman with preeclampsia is started on magnesium sulfate. So every woman with preeclampsia is started on magnesium sulfate, which is an anti-epileptic agent, or an agent that prevents slash terminates seizures. And the magnesium is given during labor and is continued for 24 hours postpartum, sort of to prevent those
seizures from happening. And it's also important to
manage the hypertension. You can't just leave the woman
with high blood pressures while she's pregnant. So we can use drugs such as hydralazine. Drugs such as hydralazine and labetalol. And labetalol. So hydralazine and labetalol are safe antihypertensives
to use in pregnancy. Alright, so those are some details about a pretty feared
complication of pregnancy. Preeclampsia.