Key result
During the final two months of pregnancy, 16.3% of perfectly healthy pregnant women exhibited cardiac conditions simulating organic disease.
Pregnancy can induce physiological changes that simulate organic heart disease in healthy women, emphasizing the importance of accurate cardiac diagnosis.
Requires careful differentiation of physiological from pathological cardiac signs in late pregnancy; leaves open refinement of pregnancy-specific diagnostic criteria.
What advice shall be given tothe cardiac patient who contemplates marriage? If pregnancy ensues is it not likely to cause the mother's death or, if not that, to cut years off her length of life? It is my purpose in this article to discuss pregnancy in the cardiac patient in an attempt to answer these questions and to offer a brief statement of the therapeutic principles. DIAGNOSIS The first essential is an accurate diagnosis of the condition of the heart; it has been amply demonstrated that many of the patients whose hearts have been thought to be diseased in reality possess fully normal hearts. Gammeltoft1of Copenhagen has shown that during pregnancy the cardiac condition may often simulate organic disease although the latter is not actually present. He studied 239 perfectly healthy pregnant women and found that during the final two months of pregnancy 39, or 16.3 per cent,
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WILLIAM D. REID (1930) conducted a review in Pregnancy (n=239). Pregnancy was evaluated on Cardiac condition simulating organic disease. During the final two months of pregnancy, 16.3% of perfectly healthy pregnant women exhibited cardiac conditions simulating organic disease.