Hellp Syndrome and Heart Disease: A Cross Sectional Study in Jeddah- KSA

Background: HELLP is a potentially life-threatening conditions which has some similarity with preeclampsia therefore, it poses a challenging diagnostic and management issues for clinician. It is composed of H=hemolysis, EL=elevated liver enzymes and LP=low platelets. The aims of this study are to assess the prevalence of HELLP syndrome among Saudi Arabian, besides, assessing the risk factors related to it.

Methodology: This is an analytical cross-sectional study conducted in kingdom of Saudi Arabia (female who previously get pregnant) from 07/08/2020 till 29/11/2020. The study was depending on using of online questionnaire assessing demographic factors including age and nationality besides disease-related information: Heart disease, Smoker patient, related risk factors of disease and DM patient.

Results: We included 457 women who agreed to participate in the study and completed the questionnaire. 36.1% of participants were aged between 25-35 years. 13.3% of the sample had reported that they are smokers and 6.1% as X-smokers while 16.8% of the sample had diabetes mellitus. The prevalence of HELLP was 38.3%. It was found that age is not a significant factor in occurrence of HELLP symptoms except in having distribution of liver function (P=0.005). Cardiac diseases are another significant risk factor in developing symptoms of HELLP especially high blood pressure where 46% of patients with cardiac disease reported having high blood pressure during pregnancy with a risk of eight times over those with no cardiac disease (OR=8.03, 95% CI=4.2100 to 15.3, P=0.000) however, it has no significant effect on developing disturbance in liver function.

Conclusion: we had found the 38.3% of females in Saudi Arabia had HELLP in their pregnancy, with increase the prevalence of some other conditions including smoking, diabetes mellitus, hypertension and autoimmune diseases which all found to increase the risk for developing HELLP in females. More investigation is needed to explore the same prevalence using hospital based study design.