Placental abruption and long-term cardiovascular morbidity of the offspring.

OBJECTIVE: While placental abruption is often associated with short-term adverse pregnancy outcomes, we sought to assess whether placental abruption increases the risk for long-term cardiovascular morbidity of the offspring.

METHODS: To study the long-term cardiovascular hospitalizations of offspring of patients with and without placental abruption, cardiovascular morbidity was assessed up to the age of 18 years according to a predefined set of ICD-9 codes associated with hospitalization of the offspring. Our data consist of deliveries which occurred between the years 1991 and 2014 in a tertiary medical center. Pregnancies following fertility treatments, multifetal pregnancies, and pregnancies with offspring with congenital anomalies, lack of prenatal care, and perinatal mortality were excluded from the study. We used Kaplan-Meier curve to compare cumulative morbidity incidence and Cox proportional hazards model to control for confounder.

RESULTS: During the study period, we examined 217,910 deliveries, out of which 0.46% (n = 1003) were effected by placental abruption. Compared to normal birth children, children born to mothers with placental abruption did not show a significantly higher cumulative incidence of long-term cardiovascular morbidity (1.0% vs. 0.6%; p = 0.127). Placental abruption was not noted as an independent risk factor for long-term cardiovascular morbidity of offspring in the Cox regression analysis, which adjusted for confounders.

CONCLUSION: Our study does not support the association between placental abruption and risk for long-term cardiovascular morbidity of the offspring.