Identifying high risk pregnancy

If a woman has any condition that raises her or her baby’s chances of having some health issues, it becomes a high risk pregnancy.

Sometimes medical conditions are present before pregnancy occurs. In other cases a few conditions may develop during pregnancy. To take good care of a woman with high risk pregnancy one must enrol in a tertiary care centre with multispecialty facilities.

It is important to for this facility to have a well equipped:

Labour room n

Neonatal ICU n

Availability of an n anaesthetist Medical ICU and n

Blood bank facilities n for the safety of mother and child.

We have commonly encountered cases where a normal looking easy going pregnancy suddenly converts to high risk with complaints of bleeding, preterm labour pains, sudden loss of foetal movements, rise of blood sugar and blood pressure.

Bleeding and pain in early pregnancy may be due to ectopic pregnancy (tubal) or miscarriages. In late pregnancies, it is due to placental problems or antepartum haemorrhage which requires immediate medical attention,

Blood bank facilities as already emphasised and an early delivery at times to save the lives of the baby and the mother.

High blood pressure may lead to fits which is life threatening for both. For such conditions, Medical

ICU is required to stabilise the mother and plan her delivery.

Hence, to summarise, every pregnancy has a potential to be high risk.

To ensure life safety we must judicially select a tertiary care centre where adequate backups of expert doctors in different fields are also available including endocrinologists, physicians, cardiologists skin and eye specialists.

To know more about high risk pregnancy, please consult your doctor.

For any queries on above article, you may reach out directly to the author.

Disclaimer: The veracity of any health claim made in the above article is the responsibility of the hospital/doctor concerned.