A Pregnant Woman with Edema: Conclusion

A mobile intensive care unit was dispatched to a suburban hospital for a 26-year-old woman who was 26 weeks pregnant and had been diagnosed with preeclampsia. The report from the referring facility indicated that the patient was stable without complaints but needed transported for further evaluation to a tertiary care center that specializes in high-risk obstetrics. The referring facility asked the transport crew to bring a fetal heart monitor because the fetus had demonstrated sporadic episodes of bradycardia. The history obtained indicated this patient was a gravida 1 para 0 who had developed some very mild elevations in her blood pressure (BP) accompanied by swelling of her face, feet, and hands beginning at 18 weeks' gestation She had been admitted to the obstetric unit 24 hours before transport, complaining of a headache associated with a blood pressure of 144/100 mmHg, which was the highest reading that she had experienced during her pregnancy. The 24-hour urine protein was 333 mg/day (normal, 44–225). Initial suspicion of the attending obstetrician was pregnancy-induced hypertension (PIH), also referred to as preeclampsia.