More scary studies-pay attention Sue!

More scary studies on babycenter this week-for those of us who've had pregnancy complications! These are important for Sue(my mother in law) as well as myself because we've had preeclampsia(also known as toxemia). My grandmother also had preeclampsia with her first baby-and she's had kidney problems and heart problems.

Pregnant women who experience numerous complications, such as preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, or preterm birth, may also be at an increased risk of developing heart disease and early death, new research suggests. A few weeks ago or so there was also a study that showed pregnant women who suffer the dangerous high blood pressure condition preeclampsia, or who deliver a low-birthweight baby, may be at increased risk of developing kidney disease later in their lives, researchers report. "It is well known that preeclampsia is associated with later cardiovascular disease in the mother....."http://www.babycenter.com/news/archive.jhtml?id=530537&i=40

http://www.babycenter.com/news/?id=531470#story
Pregnancy complications were associated with an independent 60 percent increased risk for development of cardiovascular disease and a more than two-fold increased risk for death from any cause, according to analyses done by a team from Duke University Medical Center and Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

This next one makes me really angry because I asked Dr. Scaffidi about it. It seemed reasonable to me that cutting on the cervix could cause pregnancy problems and I asked about it. He assured me that it had no effect whatsoever!! I had the LEEP procedure done when Leanna was about 2 months old. Obviously I'm doing ok, cause I've had two babies since then, but I did lose the first pregnancy after the surgery. Not that it was necesarily related, but it's a possibility.

Cervical surgeries may cause pregnancy problems- Some of the most common methods used to treat precancerous cells of the cervix may also greatly increase risks for problem pregnancies, researchers report. loop electrosurgical excision procedure (LEEP), the most popular treatment, increased a woman's risk of both preterm delivery and delivering a low-birth-weight infant by between 70 percent and 80 percent, and nearly tripled the risk for premature rupturing of the cervical membranes, compared to women who did not undergo this procedure.Currently, doctors are using LEEP because that's what they were trained to do, Goldstein said. " In young women, you start cutting on their cervix instead of freezing or vaporizing on the cervix and you are going to see adverse obstetrical outcomes," he said. "Lasering or freezing of the cervix doesn't have any of the risk."