Advanced cardiovascular imaging in pregnancy
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Advanced cardiovascular assessment in pregnancy
IRAS ID
237936
Contact name
Marietta Charakida
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Kings College London
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Cardiovascular (CV) disease remains the leading cause of death among women in all countries. Although there has been an overall decline in heart disease mortality for women over the past 40 years, the mortality in younger women has recently plateaued. One reason, which can explain this trend might be the inadequate or ineffective strategies in women to recognize and modify traditional CV risk factors. Additionally, female unique conditions including pregnancy itself and pregnancy associated hypertensive disorders might affect the onset of CV disease, its clinical course, the efficacy of therapy and ultimately prognosis.
Pregnancy is thought to be a key period in woman’s life that can potentially unravel pre-existing chronic vulnerability to CV disease. Various anatomical, physiological and metabolic changes occur in maternal body to benefit fetal growth. These vigorous physiologic changes may impose substantial “strain” to the maternal cardiovascular system, and might not be well tolerated by women who might be at increased cardiovascular risk before pregnancy.
Understanding the structure and function of the heart in pregnancy is vital if we are to recognize abnormalities at an early stage and plan appropriate interventions to avoid adverse maternal and fetal outcomes.
Modern ultrasound technologies can demonstrate subtle changes in cardiac geometry and performance and reveal cardiac impairment in hypertensive disorders of pregnancy both for mother and the fetus. Information obtained by echocardiography during pregnancy has the potential to assist in improving the antenatal management of pregnant women and risk stratification algorithms for pregnancy complications. Postnatal CV assessment for the mother in postpartum period (6 weeks to 3 months) will be important in identifying women who have persistent CV functional changes and thus likely to be at increased long term CV risk.REC name
HSC REC A
REC reference
18/NI/0013
Date of REC Opinion
22 Jan 2018
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion