COMPARISON OF ERYTHROCYTE INDICES IN PRE ECLAMPSIA AND NORMOTENSIVE PREGNANCY IN A TERTIARY CARE CENTRE –A CASE CONTROL STUDY

Abstract

Background: hypertensive disorders affects upto 10% of all pregnancies globally. Preeclampsia is a complex systemic syndrome that occurs after twenty weeks of gestation.Erythrocytes, the most abundant cells in the bloodstream, suffer greatly from the effects of Pre-eclampsia and the disease is related with salient changes in the morphology of erythrocytes Aim and Objective: Document the erythrocyte indices in patients with pre-eclampsia and to document the erythrocyte indices of normotensive pregnancy and to compare and correlate the erythrocyte indices between the pre-eclampsia and normotensive pregnancy Methodology: A case control study was performed among singleton 48 normotensive and 48 hypertensive pregnant women after twenty weeks of gestation delivered at RLJH hospital Kolar from January2020 - June 2021. Complete blood count was sent for all the patients to estimate erythrocyte indices. The data collected was entered in MS excel and analysed using IBM.SPSS statistics software 23.0 Version. Results: On comparing the mean values of erythrocyte indices between the normotensive group and preeclampsia group Red Cell distribution width was found to be significantly raised and other parameters were found to be not statistically significant. The mean of Red Cell distribution width of Pre-eclampsia group was 17.44 % and the level was higher than the mean of Red Cell distribution width of normotensive group (13.26 %).difference between the two was 4.177 and difference was statistically significant (p-value: 0.0001) by Independent T test. The development of pre-eclampsia was not determined by age, parity and gestational age. xxiv Conclusion: Red cell width distribution shall be used as simple,applied, non- invasive and inexpensive parameter for prediction of preeclampsia