Women with a history of gestational hypertension or of
pre-eclampsia or eclampsia are at increased risk of
hypertensive and associated diseases in later life. Our
findings are consistent with those of previous work.7–15
We found an increased risk of admission to hospital for
stroke and mortality from stroke but no significant
increased risk of morbidity and mortality from coronary
heart disease as has previously been reported.16 17
This may be because we used a study design that did
not depend on recall and used standardised criteria to
distinguish gestational hypertension and preeclampsia
from chronic pre-existing hypertension.
This is of importance in counselling women about
their future health risks after delivery and in designing
healthcare interventions to minimise avoidable morbidity
and mortality.
Our design minimised the information bias that
may occur with retrospective studies and quantified the
absolute risk of adverse outcomes. It has two key
advantages over many other investigations into the
associations of interest: the underlying cohort design
and the use of different data sources to ascertain the
outcomes of interest, which permitted assessment of
the consistency of the findings.