Pregnancy-Related Retinopathy

Abstract

Gestation period is a time span from fertilization to giving birth to a baby for women of childbearing age, a process both for a fetus absorbing its maternal nutrition and for the maternal body having adaptive changes. During pregnancy, the maternal body would have systemic, temporary, high-load, metabolic stress reaction in all systems, organs, tissues, and cells under the hormone changes; in these particular situations the systemic arterial blood vessels can take change, which would manifest and even lead to disease in all systems of the whole body, while the retina with microvessels is very sensitive to the changes mentioned above. During pregnancy, the probability of gestational hypertension disorders complicating with retinal vascular disease and central serous chorioretinopathy is significantly increased. For this special group, ophthalmology doctors and obstetricians often face tough decisions such as whether to perform active treatment for the primary disease or not, whether it is necessary to take active eye care or not, and whether to give up the treatment or even recommend termination of pregnancy or not. From the HIM thought, we realize that complications during pregnancy period are based on the special physiological changes of this period and time-limited; for example, when the retinal artery spasm has only functional damage and has not been formed for the organic change, it might regress spontaneously during the postpartum period; on the other hand, pregnancy includes dynamic changes, and the severity of retinal vascular lesions and damage will reflect the seriousness of the other organ damage in the whole body, which should be actively intervened. Therefore, the holistic concept should be established, and with a comprehensive understanding of the natural course of fundus lesions during pregnancy, the whole body could be analyzed in a cross-organ level, associated with obstetrical department, and thus the crises would be prevented before they occur.