Obese women who undergo bariatric surgery before having a baby have a much lower risk of developing serious health problems during pregnancy, finds a study published on bmj.com today.
Obesity, especially extreme obesity, is a risk factor for hypertensive disorders in pregnancy. These include serious conditions such as pre-eclampsia, where abnormally high blood pressure and other disturbances develop during pregnancy. They are a common cause of pregnancy complications and infant death and affect about 7% of all pregnancies in the United States.
Bariatric surgery is an effective weight loss intervention for women with a body mass index (BMI) of 40 or more, or a BMI of 35-40 with associated conditions like diabetes. But little is known about the impact of surgery on hypertensive disorders in pregnancy.
So researchers from Johns Hopkins University in the United States set out to test the theory that women who had a delivery after bariatric surgery would have lower rates of hypertensive disorders in pregnancy compared with women who had a delivery before su