BACKGROUND:

Severe preeclampsia as a public health problem is a multifactorial and several events that result in highly lethal episodes of obstetric emergencies. In Mexico according to data reported by the INEGI, preeclampsia had a frequency until 35.6%. Maternal death is an indicator of impact and quality of obstetric care and is associated with failures in the health care and preventable deaths are up 80%. Prevention is most important to prevent complications, as well biochemical markers as risk factors like uric acid to known is modified levels in this obstetric complication.

OBJECTIVES:

To determine whether serum uric acid levels correlate with the presence of severe preeclampsia, as well as their clinical presentation, and maternal morbidity and fetal mortality in patients hospitalized in the intensive care unit.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

A cross-sectional study, retrolective, descriptive was carried-out. Were included pregnancies higher than 20 weeks with reports of serum measurement of uric acid at hospitalization, with an established diagnosis of severe preeclampsia were admitted to the service of intensive care unit. Statistical analysis was performed using Microsoft Excel 2010 and the Statistical program SPSS for Windows version 19.0.

RESULTS:

Were included 72 patients in the present study, pregnant normotensive patients had significantly lower uric acid 3.6±0.4 mg/dL compared with the study group with severe preeclampsia 6.3±1.4 mg/dL (p <0.001). With regard to the clinical manifestation the vasospasm and the epigastralgia were related with the hyperuricemia; as well as the studied data of severity, as the acute renal damage with the consequent direct correspondence in the maternal mortality. In relation to the fetal pronostic a negative correlation is observed in the qualification APGAR with more importance to the 5 minutes.

CONCLUSIONS:

In this study, a statistically significant relationship between high levels of uric acid in the presence of preeclampsia was identified. With respect to the clinical presentation of data presentation and epigastralgia vasospasm they are related to hyperuricemia, and is associated with poor perinatal and maternal outcomes. Thus, the elevation of uric acid could be a prognostic tool for easy determination that would identify a group of patients with severe preeclampsia associated with higher damage.