[Captopril treatment of severe arterial hypertension in pregnancy]

The authors report three cases where captopril was used in pregnancy. This was shown to be more useful in cases of essential hypertension than in toxaemia. There was no bad side effect from the use of Captopril. It did not alter the fetal growth once the hypertension was well controlled. Using it together with other anti-hypertensives has to be thought out very carefully and it has to be used with great care. The state of the newborns at birth was satisfactory. Follow-up was without complications except for one case where was a persistent ductus. Whether captopril had any role to play in this is uncertain. Although these results are good, captopril should not be used as first choice treatment in hypertension.