The Challenge of Thrombophilia in Maternal–Fetal Medicine

Twenty years ago we did not have a problem with thrombophilia as a cause of venous thromboembolism in pregnant and postpartum women, or rather, we did not know we had a problem. The only known major thrombophilic disorder was deficiency of antithrombin, and it was found only rarely in such women. Recently, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of identifiable causes of thrombophilia. They include, in addition to antithrombin deficiency, protein C and protein S deficiencies, factor V Leiden, the G20210A mutation of the prothrombin gene, and homozygosity for the thermolabile variant of methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (C677T MTHFR), . . .