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Strokes during pregnancy and after childbirth have increased at what one CDC researcher calls an alarming rate.
Elena V. Kuklina, MD, PhD, a CDC epidemiologist, and colleagues compared stroke rates during pregnancy, during childbirth, and after childbirth. They used a national database that included discharge information from 1,000 hospitals.
The researchers compared the pregnancy-related stroke rates in the years 1994-1995 and 2006-2007.
"What we found was there was approximately a 50% increase in all stroke," she says. Pregnancy-related strokes totaled about 4,000 in 1994-1995, or about 2,000 each year. In 2006-2007, they totaled about 6,000, or 3,000 annually.
The number of deliveries in the two periods was comparable, she says.
Kuklina says rising rates of high blood pressure, as well as other factors, are to blame.(www.todaysgist.com)
The study is published in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.
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