[Non-surgically corrected congenital cardiac malformations in pregnant women]

The authors have studied 787 women with cardiac disease out of 78,594 pregnant women between 1971 and 1980. They found 133 women who had congenital heart disease who were delivered in their service, and they compared these with 260 pregnant women who were normal. They used the classification of the Cardiological Society of New York to grade the functional state of the patients. Five pregnancies had to be terminated before the 16th week because of a worsening of the cardiovascular state of the patient. The majority (79%) of the patients delivered vaginally and 21% had caesarean operations. 20.5% babies were born prematurely (p less than 0.005). 13.4% of the infants weighed less than 2,000 g at birth. Perinatal mortality was 62.9 per 1,000. Maternal mortality was 23.6 per 1,000. The authors conclude that these pregnancies are high-risk pregnancies where the prognosis is only favourable if the heart disease is moderate. This becomes worse when there is cardiac decompensation or cyanosis due to heart disease.