Maternal-fetal specialist sounds alarm about heart disease, pregnancy link
Dr. Afshan Hameed calls for more awareness in opinion essay
IN THE NEWS: Cardiovascular disease accounts for one-quarter of all maternal deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Yet cardiac risk assessments and preconception counseling haven’t kept pace with the crisis, Dr. Afshan Hameed writes in an opinion essay for the California Health Report. In fact, access to maternal care has declined dramatically as more than 56 hospitals across California have closed their maternity units since 2012.
It is also challenging to recognize the symptoms of cardiovascular disease in pregnant people, she notes.
“Diagnosing cardiovascular disease during pregnancy is challenging because its symptoms mimic those experienced during a normal pregnancy.”
Standardized screening of all pregnant patients could help save lives, says Hameed, who is leading a national study to test a protocol she helped develop to detect patients at risk for the disease.
“A universal cardiovascular disease risk assessment should be the standard of care for all who are planning a pregnancy, or who are pregnant or postpartum. This approach may identify increased cardiovascular risk or uncover previously undiagnosed cardiac disease during pregnancy and the postpartum period. “
She also calls for physicians and healthcare policymakers to address the maternal health crisis through awareness, education and improved access to care.
Hameed is a board-certified UCI Health cardiologist and maternal-fetal medicine specialist at UCI Health High-Risk Pregnancy Services, as well as a professor of obstetrics-gynecology and cardiology at the UC Irvine School of Medicine. She is a nationally recognized expert who co-authored the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists' inter-conception care guidelines for women with hypertension to improve postpartum care and follow up. Her clinical interests include heart disease in pregnancy, fetal echocardiography, preeclampsia and anticoagulation in pregnancy.
Hameed serves on the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative (CMQCC) Pregnancy-Associated Mortality Review Advisory Committee (PAMR), which reviews all cases of maternal mortality to identify gaps in care for quality improvement opportunities. She also helped develop the cardiovascular and venous thromboembolism toolkits published by CMQCC. She also served on the American College of Gynecology Presidential Task Force for the publication of its 2019 Practice Bulletin on Heart Disease in Pregnancy.
Make an appointment with a high-risk pregnancy specialist by calling 714-456-2911.
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Read more
- California Health Report: Opinion: It’s time to end pregnancy-related heart disease deaths ›
- What you should know about heart disease and pregnancy ›
- Screening needed for anyone exhibiting cardiac symptoms, says maternal-fetal expert ›
- How heart attacks differ in women ›