A simple clinical method to identify women at higher risk of preeclampsia

An outstanding issue is how to efficiently identify women at high risk of preeclampsia. This retrospective cohort study included 8672 pregnancies at a single centre in Toronto. We tested our simple method - presence vs. absence of ≥1 major (pre-pregnancy BMI > 30 kg/m2, chronic hypertension, pre-pregnancy diabetes mellitus and assisted reproductive therapy) or ≥2 minor (prior stillbirth, age >40 years, nulliparity, multifetal pregnancy, chronic kidney disease, and SLE) risk factors for PE. The RR of PE was 8.4 (95% CI 5.3-13.2) and the model C-statistic 0.74 (95% CI 0.69-0.79). Further testing of this method elsewhere is warranted.