A panel of haemostatic tests was perfomed on 400 primiparous women at 28 weeks to
test whether one or more could predict the development of pregnancy complications.
Fifteen women subsequently developed pre-eclampsia with significant proteinuria and
13 delivered growth retarded infants. There were no significant differences between
mothers in the pre-eclampsia group and 22 randomly selected controls. A stepwise logistic
discriminant analysis of the data did not produce a significant model. In the growth
retarded group only beta thromboglobulin levels were significantly lower than in the
controls (p <0.05), although in the logistic discriminant analysis the inclusion of
both beta thromboglobulin and fibrin degradation products led to a borderline significant
improvement in fit of the model. We conclude that the haemostatic variables studied
are not significantly changed at 28 weeks nor clinically useful predictors of either
pre-eclampsia or fetal growth retardation.
Keywords
Haemostasis - Pre-eclampsia - Fetal growth retardation