Eclampsia in Brazil in the 21st Century - Revista Brasileira de Ginecologia e Obstetrícia

Recently, Bartal and Sibai wrote about the current concepts of eclampsia in the 21st Century. One of the several interesting points of this article is the comparison of the incidence of eclampsia between developed countries and countries with low socioeconomic status. The eclampsia rate per 10,000 births ranged around 150.6 in Madagascar, 140.1 in Tanzania and 50.2 in India. When comparing these numbers with those of developed countries, we see incredible lower rates such as 8.6 in Australia, 8.4 in Canada, 3.4 in the US, 2.7 in the UK and 1.5 in Finland.

Guida et al. analyzed data on the prevalence of eclampsia in Brazil. The cumulative frequency of hypertensive disease during pregnancy was 6.7%, which is similar to other countries. They found a frequency of eclampsia of 1.7 to 6.2% in hypertensive pregnant women. Of the 10 studies analyzed, 3 reported the occurrence of eclampsia. In these 3 series, we had 42,220 births and an eclampsia rate of 10.42 per 10,000 births. These data point to an eclampsia rate similar to Australia or Canada, but higher than in countries such as the UK and Finland.

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