Patients treated for infertility were twice as likely to be hospitalized with heart disease in the year after delivery, according to a study conducted by Rutgers Health experts using more than 31 million hospital records. Infertility patients were 2.16 times more likely to be hospitalized for high blood pressure or dangerously elevated blood pressure than patients who conceived normally.
“Postpartum screenings are important for all patients, but this study indicates that they are especially important for patients who are trying to conceive,” said lead author Rei Yamada, MD, an obstetrician-gynecologist at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. Get treatment for infertility.” Study.
The study authors say their results support standards of care that now call for early postpartum screening three weeks after delivery, standards that some health systems have not yet adopted. Most of the increased risk occurred in the first month after delivery, especially for patients who developed dangerously high blood pressure.
“And these results are not the only ones indicating that follow-up should be sooner,” said Cande Ananth, chief of the division of epidemiology and biostatistics in the department of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical. Senior author of School and Studies. “We have been involved in a series of studies over the past few years that have found elevated risks of heart disease and stroke in various high-risk patient populations within the first 30 days after delivery – risks that may be reduced with earlier follow-up. Can be taken care of.”
The study analyzed the Nationwide Readmissions Database, which contains nationally representative data on approximately 31 million hospital discharges and readmissions per year. The database includes diagnosis codes, which let researchers find specific populations and identify reasons for readmission.
Researchers used data from more than 31 million patients who were discharged after delivery from 2010 to 2018, including 287,813 patients who received any infertility treatment.
Although infertility treatment predicted a sharply increased risk of heart disease, the study authors said that young people, relative to infertility treatment patients, kept their overall risk significantly lower. Only 550 out of every 100,000 women who received infertility treatment and 355 out of every 100,000 who conceived naturally were hospitalized for heart disease in the year after delivery.
The reason for the increased risk of heart disease associated with infertility treatment is unclear. The increase in heart disease may be due to infertility treatments, underlying medical problems that make patients infertile, or some other reason.
“Looking forward, I would like to see whether different types of infertility treatments and, importantly, medications are associated with different risk levels,” Yamada said. “Our data did not provide any information about which patients received which treatment. More detailed information may also provide insight into how infertility treatment affects cardiovascular outcomes.”
