Sonographic Comparison of Peak Systolic Velocities of Fetal Middle Cerebral Artery Among Normotensive and Hypertensive Mothers

Background: Pregnancy-induced hypertension is most common hypertension in expectant women after 20 weeks growing the risk of subsequent hypertension, ischemic heart disease and cerebrovascular disease. Reduced renovation of the spiral artery is particularly well-thought-out as a cause failing. Maternal hypertension effects placental insufficiency, which can disturb the nutrition and the oxygen supply to the fetus. In hypertensive mothers, the potential of placental insufficiency is raised leading to intrauterine growth retardation but peak systolic velocity of middle cerebral artery has no reference value for our population. No matter, Ultrasonography can examine dynamically in real-time. However, the sonographic criteria in practice have no clear-cut numerical value to label IUGR. Objective: To compare peak systolic velocity of fetal middle cerebral artery among normotensive and hypertensive mothers. Setting: The data was collected from the following setups of Pakistan: Mushtaq Medical Imaging Sargodha, PAF Hospital Lahore. Materials and methods: The study was conducted after the approval of ethical committee of the University of Lahore. All patients were enrolled in this study after signing the informed consent form. Toshiba Xario with convex transducer of frequency 3-5 MHz was used. Fetal Middle cerebral artery indices were measured by Pulsed and Power Doppler through trans-abdominal scan. A cross-sectional analytical sampling technique was used and data were further analyzed with the help of the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version twenty-four (SPSS 24, International Business Machines, Armonk, NY, the United States of America). Results: Among 137 patients, 60(43.8%) patients were hypertensive with mean PSV of the MCA, 35.63 cm/s and 77 (56.2%) normotensive patients with mean PSV of 36.64 cm/s. Conclusions: Peak systolic velocity of fetal middle cerebral artery in hypertensive mothers is less than that of Normotensive mothers.