Maternal Health Outcomes After Pregnancy-Associated Stroke: A Population-Based Study With 19 Years of Follow-Up

• Published in: Stroke (1970) Vol. 54; no. 2; pp. 337 - 344
• Main Authors: Yu, Amy Y.X., Nerenberg, Kara A., Diong, Christina, Fang, Jiming, Chu, Anna, Kapral, Moira K., Edwards, Jodi D., Dancey, Sonia R., Austin, Peter C., Auger, Nathalie
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Lippincott Williams & Wilkins 01.02.2023
• Subjects: Adult; Female; Follow-Up Studies; Humans; Ontario; Outcome Assessment, Health Care; Retrospective Studies; Stroke - etiology; Ontario; mortality; morbidity; outcomes; stroke; pregnancy; sex
• ISSN: 0039-2499; 1524-4628; 1524-4628
• DOI: 10.1161/STROKEAHA.122.041471

Pregnancy-associated stroke carries high short-term morbidity and mortality, but data on subsequent maternal outcomes are limited. We evaluated long-term maternal health outcomes after pregnancy-associated stroke. In this retrospective cohort study, we used administrative data to identify pregnant adults aged ≤49 years with stroke between 2002-2020 in Ontario, Canada and 2 comparison groups: (1) non-pregnant female patients with stroke and (2) pregnant patients without stroke. Patients who survived the index admission were followed until 2021. After propensity score matching, we used Cox regression with a robust variance estimator to compare pregnant patients with stroke and the 2 comparison groups for the composite outcome of death and all-cause non-pregnancy readmission. Where proportional hazard assumption was not met, we reported time-varying hazard ratios (HR) with 95% CIs by modeling the log-hazard ratio as a function of time using restricted cubic splines. We identified 217 pregnant patients with stroke, 7604 non-pregnant patients with stroke, and 1 496 256 pregnant patients without stroke. Of the 202 pregnant patients with stroke who survived the index stroke admission, 41.6% (6.8 per 100 person-years) subsequently died or were readmitted during follow-up. Median follow-up times were 5 years (pregnancy-associated stroke), 3 years (non-pregnant stroke), and 8 years (pregnant without stroke). Pregnant patients with stroke had a lower hazard of death and all-cause readmission compared with non-pregnant patients with stroke at 1-year follow-up (HR, 0.64 [95% CI, 0.44-0.94]), but this association did not persist during longer-term follow-up. Conversely, pregnant patients with stroke had higher hazard of death and readmission compared with pregnant patients without stroke at 1-year follow-up (HR, 5.70 [95% CI, 3.04-10.66]), and this association persisted for a decade. Stroke during pregnancy is associated with long-term health consequences. It is essential to transition care postpartum to primary or specialty care to optimize vascular health.