European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine

Background: The triad of pregnancy induced hypertension (PIH), infections, and hemorrhages constitutes a significant proportion in the maternal mortality and morbidity. About 5 to 10 percent of pregnancies are complicated by the PIH. It is being observed that the sensitivity of this screening test is increased in detecting adverse perinatal outcome, if the doppler ultrasound is performed at gestational period of 23 to 26 weeks instead of 19 to 22 weeks. So, present study was conducted with an aim to evaluate the association of the deranged uterine artery velocity indices on doppler ultrasound with maternal and fetal outcomes among pregnant women with PIH.
Methods: The present prospective study was conducted among 132 singleton pregnant women (patient age: 19 to 33 years and gestational age: 25-39 weeks) with PIH in the department of Obstetrics and Gynecology in tertiary care teaching hospital of North India for 12 months (January 2021 to December 2021) after obtaining the ethical approval from the institutional ethical committee.The ultrasound examination was performed using a GENERAL ELECTRIC LOGIQ P5 ultrasound scanner machine.Chi square test was used to find association between uterine artery indices and fetal outcome and a p value of <0.05 was considered as statistically significant.
Results: The mean age of pregnant women was 24.8±3.7 years.In our study 40.8% of subjects were nulliparous, 43.9% of subjects were having parity of 1, 12.2% of subjects were having parity of 2.In our study, the doppler ultrasound was conducted among pregnant women with PIH for various indices. The uterine artery doppler ultrasound showed that 35.7% of subjects were having normal uterine artery indices, whereas 36.7% and 27.6% of subjects were having bilateral abnormal uterine artery indices and unilateral abnormal uterine dopplerrespectively.The chi-square analysis showed statistically significant association between perinatal mortality and abnormal uterine artery indices (p<0.05).
Conclusion: Doppler study for fetal surveillance in pregnancy-induced hypertension is a very useful device and abnormal uterine artery velocimetry also seems to have worse pregnancy outcomes in the present study.