#5-61E. Beyond the Fourth Trimester: Leveraging Pregnancy History for Lifelong Cardiovascular Prevention (Lancet, 2026)

Are pregnancy complications merely transient obstetric events, or do they serve as early windows into a woman's lifelong cardiovascular risk? This comprehensive review by Pabón et al. underscores that adverse pregnancy outcomes (APOs), such as pre-eclampsia and gestational diabetes, significantly elevate long-term cardiovascular morbidity, though the precise causal pathways and the predictive added-value of APOs in standard risk-stratification tools remain major clinical knowledge gaps. By systematically documenting pregnancy history, primary care clinicians can identify high-risk women early, shifting cardiovascular prevention upstream through timely, lifestyle and guideline-directed interventions to optimize long-term maternal health.

Citation: Pabón MA, Smith G, Sharma G, Catov J, Lewandowski AJ, Adam S, Honigberg MC; Cardiovascular Disease in Pregnancy Writing Group. Adverse pregnancy outcomes and long-term cardiovascular disease risk. The Lancet. 2026. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(26)01235-3

URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(26)01235-3

Disclaimer: This audio summary is based on personal interpretation and does not guarantee the exact content of the original paper. Please refer to the original article for details.