Haematology of pregnancy

Abstract

The physiological changes that occur in the blood during pregnancy are largely beneficial to mother and baby, but can sometimes cause problems. • Expansion of RBC mass and tissue proliferation results in increased demand for haematinics, and often nutritional anaemia. • Increase in total blood volume and haemostatic changes help to combat the hazard of haemorrhage at delivery, but pregnancy is thereby a hypercoagulable state and carries risks of various haemostatic disorders (Figure 1), from thromboembolism to disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC). • Paternal antigens carried by the fetus but not present in the mother may provoke maternal immune responses, and alloimmune anaemia and thrombocytopenia.