Pregnancy with Heart Disease: Maternal Outcomes and Risk Factors for Fetal Growth Restriction

Caring for children and mothers suffering from cardiac disease is highly challenging, with issues including late diagnosis as well as inadequate infrastructure and supply of drugs. We aimed to evaluate maternal outcomes among pregnant women suffering from heart disease with a live birth, and explored the risk factors for fetal growth restriction among these patients. A retrospective study was performed at the National Hospital of Obstetrics and Gynecology (Hanoi, Vietnam) over a 3-year period from 2014 to 2016. A total of 284 patients were enrolled in the study. Overall, most women were aged below 35 years and were diagnosed with heart disease before pregnancy. Of the women experiencing rheumatic heart disease, the prevalence of mitral valve regurgitation was the highest (40.14%), while the figure for aortic valve regurgitation was the lowest (4.23%). Of women with congenital heart defects, the most common defects were ventricular septal defect (VSD) and atrial septal defect (ASD) (19.37% and 16.55%, respectively), while 5.28% of mothers were diagnosed with tetralogy of Fallot and 1.76% with patent ductus arteriosus. Noted clinical presentations of the patients included palpitation (63.38%), breathlessness (23.59%), leg edema (8.45%), and chest pain (8.1%). The common complications in the study population included 16.90% of women having heart failure and 19.37% having arrhythmias. The incidence of fetal growth restriction was 9.15%. Hypertension (odds ratio (OR): 59.75, 95% confidence interval (CI): 9.1–392.17), the heart disease types (ASD (OR: 4.27, 95% CI: 1.19–15.29) and tetralogy of Fallot (OR: 6.82, 95% CI: 1.21–38.55)), and the complications (heart failure (OR: 10.34, 95% CI: 2.75–38.87) and pulmonary edema (OR: 107.16, 95% CI: 4.96–2313.93)) were observed as risk factors for intrauterine growth restriction. This study provides a cornerstone to promote further studies and to motivate people to apply evidence-based medical care for mothers with diagnosed cardiac disease in the antenatal and postnatal periods.