Abstract

To evaluate the effect of gestational hypertension on the maternal mean platelet volume (MPV). The study group comprised pregnant women with gestational hypertension who gave birth to single, term, healthy fetuses and control group was pregnant women without any complications. MPVs were calculated within 24 hours in the intrapartum period. The mean MPV of 68 hypertensive and randomly selected 135 normotensive pregnant women were compared. The MPV of gestational hypertensive group was significantly higher (9.5±0.98 vs 9.2±0.9 fL; p=0.015). Using ROC analysis, the optimal MPV cut off value was found 9.25 fL with the sensitivity of 60.0% and the specificity of 61.0% (AUC=0.622, 95% CI=0.538-0.707, p=0.004) for the prediction of gestational hypertension. This study demonstrated that maternal MPV cannot be used to predict gestational hypertension in clinical practice due to its low sensitivity and specificity. However, further studies are needed to examine the predictive value of MPV in the progression of the hypertensive diseases of pregnancy.

Key words: Pregnancy, gestational hypertension, mean platelet volume