ABSTRACT
Preeclampsia is a relatively common disorder of pregnancy, affecting 2%–5% of women. It is potentially associated with severe and devastating complications that can lead to death or significant morbidity of both mother and child. Preeclampsia remains one of the major causes of maternal death, being associated with more than 76,000 deaths worldwide every year. Preeclampsia is a self-limiting disease insofar as while there is currently no treatment that will stop disease progression, delivery, specifically delivery of the placenta, effectively cures the disease. The central characteristic of preeclampsia is the development of new-onset hypertension after 20 weeks' gestation during pregnancy. One approach to distinguishing between different subtypes of preeclampsia is to describe the disease according to the range of symptoms and signs that are identified and/or to the time point at which delivery needed to be expedite.
