The risks of pregnancy in the 21st century

摘要

There are jokes about pregnancy being a "sexually transmitted, life-threatening illness." Tragically for a small proportion of women that indeed becomes the case, and as access to intensive care improves around the world, so too comes the expectation that critically-ill pregnant (and postpartum) women be managed with the same high standards of intensive care we are coming to expect in other conditions. Emerging infectious diseases such as the 2009 influenza A/H1N1 pandemic which disproportionately affected pregnant and postpartum women have highlighted to the global intensive care community how important an understanding of this cohort is (1). Unfortunately, we have very little good information on the epidemiology of critical illness in pregnancy (2).