Pregnancy complications and long-term cardiovascular disease: a prognostic risk model for predicting cardiovascular risk in postpartum patients.

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD), like heart attacks, strokes, and heart failure, are the leading cause of death worldwide. We know that certain pregnancy complications, such as high blood pressure, gestational (pregnancy-related) diabetes, and giving birth early, can increase the risk of developing CVD later in life. However, the current tools doctors use to assess someone’s risk of CVD do not take these
pregnancy complications into account. This means we might miss some people who are actually at higher risk.

My goal is to better understand how pregnancy complications are linked to CVD development. To do this, I plan to look at a large collection of data from pregnant people who were part of the “Born in Bradford” (BiB) study. This study collected information from pregnant people during their pregnancies and births. I will combine this with hospital and GP records to see how often CVD happens in the 10 years after pregnancy. I will compare those who had normal pregnancies with those who had complications. From this, I plan to create a new risk assessment tool that includes pregnancy complications, so that doctors can better predict the 10-year risk of CVD in people who have recently given birth. This will help identify
those at higher risk who might benefit from closer monitoring, lifestyle changes or risk reducing treatments.