Lupus anticoagulant in Jamaican Primiparae and the clinical significance in asymptomatic patients

ABSTRACT

Sera from one thousand pregnant primiparous women from the antenatal clinic of the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) were screened for lupus anticoagulant. Twenty-three women (2.3 percent) were seropositive. A review was performed after delivery and eight hundred and sixty-eight (87 percent) of the case notes were found 20/23 (87 percent) of those with positive tests and 848/977 (87 percent) of those with negative tests. The outcome variables examined were pre-eclampsia, postpartum haemorrhage, type of delivery, birth weight of the baby, foetal outcome, foetal distress, still birth, neonatal death, Apgar score at birth and need for admission to the special care nursery. No differences were found between the two groups for any of these variables (AU)