Prevalence of Cardiovascular Diseases among Pregnant Women Attending Antenatal Care in Jimma University Medical Center, Southwest Ethiopia

Background: Pregnant women with underlying cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are at increased risk for adverse maternal and perinatal outcomes due to difficulty in tolerating the physiologic changes of pregnancy. Maternal CVDs are responsible for 10-15% of maternal death. Rheumatic heart disease is the commonest cardiac disease among pregnant women in developing countries. Despite all this, there is no adequate data on the overall prevalence of cardiovascular diseases among pregnant women in our setup as well as in Ethiopia. Objectives: The aim of the study was to assess the prevalence of cardiovascular diseases among pregnant women who had antenatal care follow up at Jimma University Medical center from October 2021 to December 2021. Methods: An institution based cross sectional study was conducted among pregnant women who had antenatal care follow up at Jimma University Medical Centre. We used systematic random sampling to get sample population. Data were collected by using structured questionnaire; sphygmomanometer, echocardiogram, and electrocardiogram. The data were then entered to Epi data and exported to SPSS Version 26 for statistical analysis. Descriptive data summarizations and presentations were done to find the prevalence of CVDs in the study population. Result: A total of 156 pregnant women were enrolled in this study. The overall prevalence of cardiovascular disease was 16.7%; of which 10.3% had hypertensive disorders of pregnancy and 6.4% had cardiac disease. Preeclampsia accounted for 6.4% followed by gestational hypertension (2.6%) and chronic hypertension (1.3%).Chronic rheumatic heart disease accounted for 3.2%.atrial septal aneurysm (1.9%) and hypertensive heart disease (1.3%). In those with rheumatic heart disease, mitral valve lesions were the prominent. T wave abnormalities were the most common electrocardiography finding. Most, 121(22.4%), of the study participants had at least one abnormal echocardiography finding and among them 64(41%) had abnormal valvular lesions. Among those with valvular lesions, 5 (3.2%) had chronic rheumatic heart disease whereas 59(37.8%) had physiologic valvular lesions. Conclusion: The prevalence of cardiovascular diseases among third trimester pregnant women was high in our setup. So screening all pregnant women with electrocardiography and echocardiography is important.