South Middlesex Times

A recent study conducted by Rutgers Health experts reveals that patients who have undergone infertility treatment are twice as likely to be hospitalized with heart disease in the year following delivery, compared to those who conceived naturally. The research involved an analysis of over 31 million hospital records.

Patients who had undergone infertility treatment were found to be particularly susceptible — 2.16 times more likely than their counterparts who conceived naturally — to be hospitalized due to dangerously high blood pressure or hypertension.

"Postpartum checkups are necessary for all patients, but this study indicates they are particularly important for patients who undergo infertility treatment to achieve a conception," said Rei Yamada, an obstetrics and gynecology resident at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and lead author of the study.

The authors of the study believe their findings reinforce current standards of care which recommend an initial postpartum checkup three weeks after delivery. These standards have yet to be adopted by some health systems. The elevated risk was especially pronounced in the first month after delivery, notably among patients who developed dangerously high blood pressure.

"And these results aren’t the only ones to indicate that follow-up should occur early," said Cande Ananth, chief of the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and senior author of the study. "We have been involved in a series of studies over the past few years that have found serious risks of heart disease and stroke to various high-risk patient populations within those initial 30 days after delivery – risks that could be mitigated with earlier follow-up care."

The researchers analyzed data from the Nationwide Readmissions Database which includes approximately 31 million hospital discharges and readmissions per year. The database contains diagnosis codes enabling researchers to identify specific populations and reasons for readmission.

Despite infertility treatment predicting a significantly elevated risk of heart disease, relative youth of infertility treatment patients kept their overall risk fairly low. Out of every 100,000 women who received infertility treatment, just 550 were hospitalized with cardiovascular disease in the year after delivery, compared to 355 of every 100,000 who conceived naturally.

The exact cause of the increased risk of heart disease associated with infertility treatment remains unclear. It could be due to the infertility treatments themselves, underlying medical issues causing infertility or some other unidentified factor.

"Looking forward, I’d like to see if different types of infertility treatment and, importantly, medications are associated with different risk levels," said Yamada. "Our data gave no information about which patients had undergone which treatment. More detailed information might also provide insight into how infertility treatment impacts cardiovascular outcomes."