Death of pregnant Texas doctor draws scrutiny to heart issue
Alexander Hicks sprang from the couch and sprinted up the stairs as soon as he heard the thump. It sounded like a stack of heavy books falling off a shelf. Maybe Alyssa, their 5-year-old, had jumped out of bed? She'd been cuddled up in the master bed with her baby sister and his wife, who was nine months pregnant.
Peripartum cardiomyopathy, or PPCM, is an uncommon form of heart failure during the last month of pregnancy or up to five months after giving birth, according to the American Heart Association. It weakens and enlarges the heart chambers until, in the most serious cases, the left ventricle can no longer pump enough blood to vital organs.
Doctors are trying to figure out what causes it.
"It happens in women who are young and healthy during what is supposed to be a happy time in their lives," said Dr. Lili Ayala Barouch, an associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University.
Texas leads the nation with its maternal mortality rate, which spiked from 18.6 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2010 to 35.8 deaths per 100,000 in 2014, according to a recent study in the medical journal Obstetrics and Gynecology.
http://www.chron.com/news/texas/article/Death-of-pregnant-Texas-doctor-draws-scrutiny-to-10879458.php
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