T15.1 Left ventricular systolic and diastolic function and structure in women with untreated preeclampsia

Haemodynamics in obese pregnant women

“…[11][12][13] During the time of recruitment every pregnant woman was assessed against the selection criteria and if possible recruited into the study. Available resources limited the number of obese pregnant women to 15.…”

“…After institutional ethics approval and written informed consent, 15 nonlabouring obese (body mass index (BMI) >30 kg/m 2 ) but otherwise healthy pregnant women were enrolled and were compared with 40 non-obese non-labouring pregnant women. [11][12][13] Height and weight measurements took place at the time of the TTE study. To minimize selection bias a series of inclusion and exclusion criteria were determined before participant recruitment.…”

Cardiovascular Implications in Preeclampsia

“…This is consistent with remodeling patterns seen in early hypertension without evidence of age or ethnic specificity in the women evaluated so far. 30 Although several other studies have also demonstrated LV dysfunction, [41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48] increased aortic stiffness, [49][50][51] and reduced venous capacity in preeclampsia, 52 it remains difficult to truly understand by noninvasive methods whether decreased LV performance with preeclampsia affected myocardial contractility. Indeed, each echocardiographic index is only a surrogate of the true myocardial state, and it is invariably affected by loading conditions, heart rate, and cardiac geometry in a lesser or greater extent.…”

Haemodynamics using transthoracic echocardiography in healthy pregnant and non‐pregnant baboons (Papio hamadryas)

“…The examination technique in these animals was identical to that employed in pregnant humans and the waveform patterns and velocities obtained were very similar to humans (Table 3 and Fig. 3) [4, 5]. The use of TTE in these animals and its ability to non‐invasively monitor changes in systolic and diastolic measurements means that results from future studies can be more easily translated into the human clinical situation as TTE is a validated measure of cardiac function in human pregnancy [7, 26].…”