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Pregnancy Hypertension - Chronic Hypertension, Gestational Hypertension, Identify Pregnancy Hypertension
Pregnancy Hypertension
Hypertension is a familiar word when one is talking about pregnancy complications. In fact, among the various complications that a woman can encounter, hypertension during pregnancy is perhaps the most common. But before we go into its symptoms, effects and treatments, it's important to know exactly what it is.
Chronic hypertension
Hypertension can be classified into two broad categories—chronic and gestational. Chronic hypertension is usually identified with high blood pressure in the range of or above 140/90. Chronic hypertension is not a pregnancy related condition but it can happen to pregnant women as well. Possible effects of this hypertension include heart attack, kidney damage or brain damage. However, if an expectant mother is diagnosed with chronic hypertension, or already has chronic hypertension, she can be treated with medication that helps keep her blood pressure in check. Typically, doctors put a pregnant woman with chronic hypertension on bed rest, a diet with minimal salt and plenty of quiet. In most cases, this treatment works quite effectively too.
Gestational hypertension
Gestational hypertension or pregnancy induced hypertension is a more complicated problem. It is hard to pinpoint any particular cause for this, but the likeliest explanation is that it could be the body’s immune response. The body sees the fetus as a hostile tissue and this is the body’s way of rejecting it and that’s what makes this a dangerous condition. Also, unlike chronic hypertension, where the hypertension is synonymous with high blood pressure, in case of gestational hypertension high BP is merely an effect.
There are other effects of this complication, which include kidney damage, brain swelling, seizures and strokes.
Gestational hypertension is identified with four definite symptoms. These include:
• High blood pressure (in the range of or above 140/90),
• Edema, which implies swelling, particularly in the center of the face and not the usual ankle and feet swellings,
• Hyperproteinurea, a condition wherein the urine contains protein portions and lastly,
• Hyper-reflexia, which implies, exaggerated knee-jerk reflexes.
Gestational hypertension is more dangerous than chronic hypertension because the former is a condition that escalates pretty quickly and can even force doctors to deliver the baby prematurely while the latter is a slow blood pressure progression that is easy to monitor and treat.
How to Identify Pregnancy Hypertension
The tricky part for the obstetrician is to correctly indentify the type of pregnancy hypertension. In both cases, the blood pressure will be high, so that alone cannot be a parameter. Both can lead to seizures too. However, the method most doctors find conclusive is a 24-hour sample urine test to check protein contents. In chronic hypertension, there is no excess protein in the urine but the reverse is a sure sign of gestational hypertension.
The bigger danger occurs when a woman suffers from a combination of gestational and chronic hypertension. These are rare instances, of course, but such a situation becomes extremely critical and doctors usually would want to get the baby out as soon as possible. In fact, the best cure for gestational hypertension is delivering the baby. But doctors would stall delivery in cases where the baby is too premature and its lungs haven’t fully matured.
Therefore, if a woman has gestational hypertension, then delivery of the baby is decided factoring in the severity of the condition and the advancement of the term. Hypertension and high blood pressure in the mother triggers the opposite effect and the baby in the womb will quite possibly suffer from low blood pressure.
With gestational hypertension, the best doctors can hope for is to put the patient on anti-hypertensive medication that steadies the blood pressure, but this only takes care of one effect, the rest of the problems still remain.
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