Pre-operative Preparation of Pre-eclamptic Patients Undergoing Cesarean Section: A prospective randomized comparative study between the effect of Labetalol versus Nifedipine in controlling elevation of blood pressure

Abstract

P re-eclampsia is a disorder of widespread vascular endothelial malfunction and vasospasm that occurs after 20 weeks' gestation and can present as late as 4-6 weeks’ post-partum. It is clinically defined by hypertension and proteinuria, with or without pathologic edema (Vattern and Skjaerven, 2004). Complications of pre-eclampsia are serious and may affect both the mother and the fetus; acutely pre-eclampsia can be complicated by several types of strokes either ischemic or hemorrhagic which may lead to intracerebral hemorrhage. Other serious complication is HELLP syndrome. Recently, this syndrome undergoes new classification made by University of Mississippi, which classified the disease into 3 classes according to degree of thrombocytopenia, evidence of suggestive hemolysis and evidence of Hepatic dysfunction, another classification made by University of Tennessee, which has the same criteria (Martin et al., 2006).