Pregnancy prolongation for pre-eclampsia: the obvious and the avoidable.

The paper by Mulder et al. ( I BJOG i 2021;128:121-129) addresses the effect of pregnancy prolongation on maternal and fetal outcomes in women with early-onset pre-eclampsia diagnosed after 24 weeks of gestation. They report that pregnancy prolongation - from the time of pre-eclampsia diagnosis to delivery - is associated with improved offspring outcome and survival, without adverse consequences on short-term maternal cardiovascular and metabolic function. Pre-eclampsia is currently defined as new-onset hypertension combined with de novo proteinuria and/or "adverse conditions" or "severe maternal/fetal complications" (Magee et al. I Pregnancy Hypertens i 2014;4:105-45). [Extracted from the article]