Pregnancy outcomes in women with heart disease

To evaluate the maternal and fetal outcome of pregnancies complicated by cardiac disease in a developing country.

A retrospective analysis was carried out of 144 pregnancies in women with cardiac disease who delivered in our unit between 1997 and 2006. Perinatal and maternal outcomes were interpreted according to the type of the heart disease and status of the patient according to the New York Heart Association (NYHA) classification.

The rates of rheumatic and congenital heart disease were 87.5 and 12.5%, respectively. The distribution of the patients according to the NYHA functional classification were 55.6, 36.1 and 8.3% for NYHA classes I, II and III-IV, respectively. There was no maternal mortality. Maternal morbidity was observed in 16 (11.1%) cases. Six perinatal mortalities (4.2%) occurred in this series. There were no significant difference in birth weight, gestational age at delivery and perinatal morbidity between the NYHA stage I-II and stage III-IV groups (P > 0.05), whereas maternal morbidity and cesarean delivery rates were significantly higher in the NYHA stage III-IV group (P < 0.001).

Rheumatic heart disease with pregnancy is still predominant in Turkey. Most of the patients were in a good functional group. Maternal morbidity strongly correlates with maternal cardiac classification.