- Stroke is one of the leading causes of maternal mortality in the United States.
- A large retrospective study found that people who received fertility treatments were more likely to be hospitalized for stroke in the 12 months following delivery.
- The absolute risks of being hospitalized for stroke are still low, whether you receive fertility treatments or not.
People who receive fertility treatments might have a higher risk of stroke as well as hospitalization from a stroke within a year after delivery than those who did not receive such treatments, a
The findings come from a new retrospective study of more than 31 million pregnant women ages 15 to 54 and conducted by researchers at the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey.
All told, pregnant people who received fertility treatments were 66% more likely (affecting 8 in 100,000 pregnant people) to be hospitalized for a stroke within 12 months of delivery compared to those who delivered after spontaneous conception.
More significantly, the researchers said, the risk for potentially life-threatening hemorrhagic stroke (bleeding in the brain) was more than twice as high for people who had fertility treatments while the risk of ischemic stroke (blood clot in the brain) was 55% higher.
“Strikingly, the increase in risk was evident even as early as the first 30 days post-delivery, which highlights the need for early and continued follow-up in this population,” the study authors wrote.
The findings are particularly significant since
That said, hospitalization for stroke after pregnancy is still relatively rare, at a rate of 37 hospitalizations per 100,000 for those who received fertility treatments and 29 hospitalizations per 100,000 people for those who didn’t receive fertility treatments.
The researchers proposed three separate theories as to why fertility treatments might be associated with…
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