Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 February 2010
Introduction
The true incidence of thromboembolic complications in pregnancy and the distribution of these events between the antenatal and postnatal periods are unknown. Early studies have estimated an incidence of symptomatic venous thrombosis during pregnancy using radiographic investigations between 0.5 and 3.0 per 1,000 deliveries. Lindqvist et al. used the Swedish national registries of births to investigate the number of objectively confirmed DVT between 1990 and 1993. The overall incidence of venous thromboembolic events was 1.3 per 1,000 deliveries in contrast to McColl et al. with 0.8 per 1,000 deliveries, Gherman et al. with 0.6 per 1,000 deliveries and Simpson et al. with 0.85 per 1,000 deliveries. More recent studies have demonstrated that antepartum deep vein thrombosis (DVT) is at least as common as postpartum DVT (Fig. 6.1) and can occur at any time during gestation, although pulmonary emboli (PE) remains more common postpartum. Earlier postpartum ambulation and discharge of patients from the hospital may have resulted in a relative decrease in postpartum events as compared to antepartum period, but the daily risk of thromboembolic complication was therefore highest in the postpartum period.
In a retrospective study McColl et al. described an incidence of DVT at 0.5 per 1,000 deliveries in the antenatal period and 0.21 in the puerperium. The incidence of pulmonary embolism was 0.07 per 1,000 deliveries and 0.08 in the puerperium respectively.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.