Sonographic Association of Uterine Artery Pulsatility Index with Hypertension During Third Trimester of Pregnancy

Background: Hypertension (HTN) in pregnancy is the second most basic reason for maternal death and cause obstetric complications in 5-10% of all pregnancies. HTN directly affects the blood flow of uterine artery.  Doppler screening test is a valuable method to do safe and non-invasive detection and has high reliability in the detection of uterine artery blood flow characteristics. Objective: The purpose of the present study is to find association between predictive value of uterine artery pulsatility index in normal and hypertensive pregnancy during third trimester. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted with the sample size of 138 patients by selecting the convenient sampling from Ghurki Trust Teaching Hospital, Lahore. The pulsatility index of uterine artery of all the women with normal singleton pregnancy and hypertensive during third trimester of pregnancy were obtained using Doppler ultrasound. Data was analyzed with the help of Anova .The results were derived by mean, frequency and standard deviation . Results: The significance between groups was 0.002. The mean values of right and left uterine artery pulsatility index of 36 hypertensive patients were 1.40 and 1.41 and standard deviation 0.4 and 0.5 respectively whereas the mean values of right and left uterine artery pulsatility index of 102 normal patients were 0.739 and 0.77 and standard deviation 0.23 and 0.5 respectively Conclusion: Our study concluded that there was an association between uterine atery pulsatility index and hypertension during pregnancy. The uterine artery pulsatiltiy index has increased with hypertension in third trimester of pregnancy. Keywords: Hypertension, Pulsatility Index, Doppler Ultrasound DOI: 10.7176/JHMN/72-07 Publication date:March 31st 202