Aspirin use during pregnancy
Published On - November 18, 2020
- Doctors at the
University of Texas Health Science Center are now prescribing 81-milligram
aspirin to pregnant women.
- Low dose aspirin
has been a standard treatment for pregnant women who are at risk of
preeclampsia.
- There’s debate
in the medical field about whether aspirin should be prescribed to all
pregnant women since there’s an increased risk of bleeding with daily
doses.
Along
with a daily prenatal vitamin, should pregnant women also take a low dose
aspirin?
That’s
what OB-GYNs are telling pregnant patients at the University of Texas (UT)
Health Science Center in Houston.
It’s
part of their stepped-up program to prevent preeclampsia,
the potentially life threatening pregnancy complication characterized by
dangerously high blood pressure.
The
low 81-milligram dosage, commonly referred to as “baby aspirin,” is a recommended treatment to help prevent
preeclampsia in women who are at risk.
But
last year, the UT doctors began prescribing it across the board, in part because
they found some women slipped through the cracks during screening.
“One
of the major drivers for why we started doing universal administration of low
dose aspirin was because we had patients who were candidates for it and weren’t
receiving it,” said , a maternal-fetal medicine specialist with McGovern
Medical School at UT Health.
“In
order to make sure we were not missing individuals, our department made a
recommendation to give it to all our patients” she told Healthline. “The
majority of the patients we are seeing are in a high risk category.”
The
American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) says the rate of
preeclampsia in the United States has increased 25
percent over the past two decades and is a leading cause of maternal
and fetal illness and death.
Both
the ACOG and the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommend low dose aspirin therapy for pregnant women who have
at least one high risk factor or more than one moderate risk factor.
They
define high risk as a previous history of preeclampsia, past multiple births,
chronic hypertension, diabetes, kidney disease, or an autoimmune disease such
as lupus.
Moderate
risk factors include:
- first time
giving birth
- obesity
- a family history
of preeclampsia
- being of African
descent
- low
socioeconomic status
- age 35 years or older
- having birthed a
low-weight baby
- a 10-year
interval between pregnancies
- a previous
adverse pregnancy outcome
The
groups recommend pregnant women who are at risk be treated beginning at 12
weeks until delivery.
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