[Hypotonic symptoms and pregnancy].

To our knowledge there is no study that answers the question, whether low blood pressure itself or the fall of blood pressure during standing have a negative effect on pregnant women. These patients suffer from signs of reduced central and/or peripheral blood flow like fatigue, headache, cold extremities, paresthesia, flickering, black outs and dizziness. In addition, it is of interest whether frequency, occurrence and intensity of these hypotensive symptoms alter during pregnancy. In a longitudinal study 12 hypotensive pregnant women were compared with 13 normotensive and later on in a randomized study 102 clinical healthy pregnant women were tested with a modified orthostatic test over defined time periods during pregnancy. Blood pressure and heart rate were registered in one minute intervals over 30 minute period with an automatic Dinamap measuring device. This period was subdivided in a 10 minutes lying period, 10 minutes standing period followed by a 10 minutes lying period. In addition, the pregnant women were asked about frequency, occurrence and intensity of typical hypotensive symptoms. The frequency of subjective symptoms were related to low blood pressure (p less than 0.001) but not to the fall in blood pressure during standing. The occurrence of different hypotensive symptoms (p less than 0.05) and their intensity (p less than 0.01) were most often in early pregnancy and decreased until term. We conclude that the subjective symptoms were twice as much during early pregnancy than during late pregnancy and were more often in patients with low blood pressure. Furthermore, fatigue, headache and cold extremities occur frequently during pregnancy.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)