A study of maternal and foetal outcomes in eclampsia: at a tertiary care centre

Background: Eclampsia is a life-threatening emergency that continues to be a major cause of maternal and perinatal mortality worldwide. In India figure ranges from 8-14% and perinatal mortality ranges from 14.6% to 47.4%. The present study was done with 260 cases of eclampsia who got admitted in our institute. Methods: It was a prospective observational type of study which was conducted on all pregnant women with more than 20 weeks of gestation having eclampsia who were admitted at our tertiary care centre from October 2018-October 2019. Results: In our study most of the pregnant mother belongs to the age group of 20-24 years (51.2%.) 85% did not have proper antenatal checkups. The 65.8% eclamptic patients were primi gravida and 44.4% had gestational age less than 37 weeks. More than half patients underwent caesarean for delivery and 48.15% required ICU care. The incidence of maternal mortality in the present study was 4.16% and the common causes for death were pulmonary edema, DIC, status eclampticus with aspiration pneumonia and acute kidney injury. In our study according to maturity of babies almost 56% cases were term and 35.2% babies had birth weight in the range of 2000-2500 gm. The perinatal mortality was 27.7% and corrected perinatal mortality, excluding cases of absent FHS at admission was 22.8%. Conclusions: Eclampsia continues to be an enigma in spite of great advances in the field of obstetrics. With better antenatal care, early recognition and hospital treatment of severe pre-eclampsia patients, the incidence of eclampsia can be decreased.