Assessing Pregnancy, Gestational Complications, and Co-morbidities in Women With Congenital Heart Defects (Data from ICD-9-CM Codes in 3 US Surveillance Sites)

Reproductive Health of Women with Congenital Heart Defects

This report provides an overview of the unique reproductive health issues facing women with congenital heart defects (CHDs) and of the clinical care and professional guidelines on contraception, preconception care, and pregnancy for this population. It describes Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) activities related to surveillance of reproductive health issues among females with CHDs. It also describes CDC's work bringing awareness to physicians who provide care to adolescents and women with CHDs, including obstetrician/gynecologists, about the need for lifelong cardiology care for their patients with CHDs.

Non-invasive prenatal testing in mitigating concerns from invasive prenatal diagnostic testing: retrospective assessment of utility in an academic healthcare system in the US

OBJECTIVE

Non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) is a front-line screening for fatal chromosomal aneuploidy. In pregnant women with a risk of having fetal congenital disorders, NIPT is anticipated to reduce the needs of invasive prenatal diagnostic test (IPD). The objective of this study was to understand the acceptance of NIPT and the utility of NIPT to mitigate concerns about IPD in the US high-risk pregnancy management.

DESIGN AND SETTING

This was a retrospective observational research using healthcare records obtained from an academic healthcare system in the US. The study consisted of site-level longitudinal analysis and patient-level cross-sectional analysis.

PARTICIPANT

A total of 5660 new high-risk pregnancies with age ≥35 years were identified for the longitudinal trend analysis. Cross-sectional utility assessment included 2057 pregnant women.

EXPOSURE AND OUTCOME MEASURES

Longitudinal trends of NIPT order, IPD procedure and the number of patients diagnosed with high-risk pregnancy were descriptively summarised. In the cross-sectional assessment, we tested the association between the use of NIPT and IPD using multivariable regression.

RESULTS

The rate of increase in the NIPT use exceeded the changes in the number of high-risk pregnancies with age ≥35 years, while the number of annual IPD procedures has fluctuated without specific trends. There was no significant association between the numbers of NIPT and IPD with the adjusted ORs between 0.90 and 1.14 (p>0.1). The order of NIPT was not selected as an independent variable predicting the use of IPD. Clinical characteristics indicating low socioeconomic status and limited healthcare coverage are associated with less use of NIPT and lower clinical utility.

CONCLUSION

Although prenatal care accepted NIPT over the last decade, the utility of NIPT in mitigating concerns on IPD is unclear and needs further investigation. Limited clinical utility should be addressed in the context of disparity in prenatal care.

Peripartum considerations for women with cardiac disease

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

The aim of this review of cardiac disease in pregnancy is to delineate current best practices and highlight emerging themes in the literature.

RECENT FINDINGS

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death among pregnant women in the United States. Many clinicians and institutions have developed care pathways to approach care in these high-risk patients including highly coordinated multidisciplinary teams. The diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension is the greatest risk factor for an adverse event in pregnant women. Vaginal delivery, with good neuraxial anesthesia, is usually the preferred mode of delivery in women with cardiac disease, although the rate of cesarean delivery is higher among women with heart disease.

SUMMARY

The leading cause of morbidity and mortality in pregnant women is cardiac disease. Preconception counseling is useful for optimizing patients for pregnancy and setting appropriate expectations about care and outcomes. Ensuring that women are cared for in centers with appropriate multidisciplinary resources is key for improving outcomes for cardio-obstetric patients.

Population-level surveillance of congenital heart defects among adolescents and adults in Colorado: Implications of record linkage

BACKGROUND

The objective was to describe the design of a population-level electronic health record (EHR) and insurance claims-based surveillance system of adolescents and adults with congenital heart defects (CHDs) in Colorado and to evaluate the bias introduced by duplicate cases across data sources.

METHODS

The Colorado CHD Surveillance System ascertained individuals aged 11-64 years with a CHD based on International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification diagnostic coding between 2011 and 2013 from a diverse network of health care systems and an All Payer Claims Database (APCD). A probability-based identity reconciliation algorithm identified duplicate cases. Logistic regression was conducted to investigate bias introduced by duplicate cases on the relationship between CHD severity (severe compared to moderate/mild) and adverse outcomes including all-cause mortality, inpatient hospitalization, and major adverse cardiac events (myocardial infarction, congestive heart failure, or cerebrovascular event). Sensitivity analyses were conducted to investigate bias introduced by the sole use or exclusion of APCD data.

RESULTS

A total of 12,293 unique cases were identified, of which 3,476 had a within or between data source duplicate. Duplicate cases were more likely to be in the youngest age group and have private health insurance, a severe heart defect, a CHD comorbidity, and higher health care utilization. We found that failure to resolve duplicate cases between data sources would inflate the relationship between CHD severity and both morbidity and mortality outcomes by ~15%. Sensitivity analyses indicate that scenarios in which APCD was excluded from case finding or relied upon as the sole source of case finding would also result in an overestimation of the relationship between a CHD severity and major adverse outcomes.

DISCUSSION

Aggregated EHR- and claims-based surveillance systems of adolescents and adults with CHD that fail to account for duplicate records will introduce considerable bias into research findings.

CONCLUSION

Population-level surveillance systems for rare chronic conditions, such as congenital heart disease, based on aggregation of EHR and claims data require sophisticated identity reconciliation methods to prevent bias introduced by duplicate cases.