Results of a Five-Year Experience in First Trimester Preeclampsia Screening

Background and Objectives: The study aimed to evaluate the ability defining the risk of developing preeclampsia by a screening test carried out in the first trimester (between 11 + 0 and 13 + 6 weeks of gestational age), in order to identify high-risk women requiring more intensive health surveillance. The secondary objective was to evaluate the ability of this test to predict the risk of adverse obstetric outcomes such as fetal growth restriction, intrauterine fetal death, gestational hypertension, HELLP syndrome, placental abruption, and preterm birth. Materials and Methods: This was a single-center study, conducted at the Operative Unit of Obstetrics of the State Hospital of the Republic of San Marino. Medical history was collected at the time of enrolment in writing. Subsequently, obstetric outcomes were collected for each enrolled woman, through the analysis of medical records. Results: From October 2014 to May 2019, 589 pregnant women were recruited, of whom, 474 (80.5%) were included in the low-risk group, and 115 (19.5%) in the high-risk group. At the time of analysis of this population, the obstetric outcomes were available for 498 women (84.5%), while 91 cases (15.5%) were current pregnancies. The PI of the uterine arteries was not significantly different between the two study groups. Otherwise, a significant difference was highlighted for MAP, which is higher in the case of pregnancies at high risk based on the risk factors only, and for PAPP-A, higher in the case of low-risk pregnancies. Regarding the percentage of fetal DNA, according to the most recent literature data, in our series, we report a statistically significant difference of the average between the low and high-risk groups. Conclusions: In our study, we demonstrate that the multiparametric screening test for early PE performed well in identifying women at high risk of early PE, which certainly has the most severe maternal-fetal outcomes. The data reported that ASA intake at low doses is significantly higher in the population with high-risk tests for both early PE and late PE suggest once again that anamnestic evaluation plays an essential role in women's screening.

Automated summary

This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of a screening test conducted in the first trimester in identifying the risk of developing preeclampsia. The results showed that the test performed well in identifying women at high risk and emphasized the importance of medical history evaluation in screening.