Women's HealthPending review

Pre-eclampsia

A placental disorder of pregnancy in which anti-angiogenic factors injure maternal endothelium, producing new hypertension with proteinuria or organ dysfunction after 20 weeks, curable only by delivery.

First principles

The primary lesion is a poorly implanted placenta

In normal pregnancy, trophoblast remodels the uterine spiral arteries into wide, low-resistance channels that flood the placenta with blood. In pre-eclampsia this invasion is shallow, so the spiral arteries stay narrow and high-resistance and the placenta is chronically under-perfused. Everything downstream flows from this single fact: the disease is placental in origin, which is why removing the placenta by delivery is the only cure.

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Educational content pending clinical review. Not medical advice.