Despite improvements in treatment, the number of women having heart attacks during pregnancy and shortly after giving birth is on the rise.
The number of women who experience heart attacks while pregnant, giving birth, or during the two months following birth is on the rise.
A study from the New York University School of Medicine found the risk for suffering a heart attack among pregnant and recently pregnant women rose by 25 percent between 2002 and 2014.
The researchers studied over 49 million births recorded in hospitals. They found that 1,061 heart attacks occurred during labor and delivery, 922 women were hospitalized prior to birth due to heart attacks, and 2,390 heart attacks occurred during the two-month recovery period following birth.
Heart attack rates were also shown to have increased from 7.1 out of every 100,000 pregnancies in 2002 to 9.5 out of every 100,000 pregnancies in 2014.
Continue reading