Cardiac Characteristic in Preeclampsia and Normotensive Pregnant Women Attending Bugando Medical Centre Tanzania

<i>Background</i>: Hemodynamic changes brought on by pregnancy, may affect the heart either by physiological or pathological changes. Preeclampsia-eclampsia (PE-E) primarily affects the cardiovascular system which leads to low cardiac output and a high systemic vascular resistance, this lead to abnormal adaptive mechanisms that may be a result of changes in vascular tone and may have effects on a woman's life. <i>Methodology</i>: 273 women from an obstetric ward or prenatal clinic who were at least 28 weeks pregnant and those who are 10 days postpartum at BMC participated in the comparative cross-sectional study. Transthoracic echocardiograms (TTE) were performed along with interviews of the recruited subjects. A questionnaire was implemented to gather data, and STATA version 13 was used for analysis. A level of statistical significance was defined as less than 0.05 p-value in multivariate logistic regression. <i>Results:</i> 49.45% out of 273 women, had PE-E. 78.7% out of 273 participants were ≤ 35 years of age. The prevalence of abnormal structural cardiac characteristics was 60% and 28.57% in PE-E and normotensive pregnant women respectively, while the prevalence of abnormal functional cardiac characteristics between them was nearly the same. No difference in LA enlargement between PE-E and normotensive pregnant women. Interventricular septum and posterior wall thickness of the LV were more than 5 to 8-fold in PE-E compared to normotensive pregnant women. EF and diastolic dysfunction were 3 and 2 fold respectively, in PE-E compared to normotensive pregnant women. Abnormal structural cardiac characteristics were more common among women with severe forms of PE-E by 2 to 9 fold, but there is no statistically significant in functional cardiac characteristics with the severity of PE-E. <i>Conclusion and recommendations:</i> Structural and functional cardiac abnormalities were more common in PE-E than in normotensive pregnant women, hence TTE should include as a part of an investigation into PE-E and symptomatic normotensive. Cardiac structural and functional should be followed up in patients with PE-E even after termination of pregnancy. There is a need for a larger longitudinal study to determine the proper timing of cardiac evaluation in PE-E both during ANC and post-delivery.