Rates of severe maternal morbidity continue to climb in Texas – as high as 72.7 cases per 10,000 deliveries – and those in the Texas Panhandle are no exception. Anecdotal evidence suggests that preeclampsia is a significant contributor to poor outcomes among pregnant women in this region. However, granular data of the burden of disease is unavailable.

Objective

To quantify the prevalence of preeclampsia and eclampsia among pregnant women hospitalized for delivery in six counties of the Texas Panhandle.

Methods

We obtained five years (2018-2022) of inpatient hospitalizations from the Texas Hospital Inpatient Discharge Public Use Data File and included women of childbearing age (14-59) with home addresses located in Parmer, Gray, Swisher, Deaf Smith, Potter, and Randall counties. The sampling unit was hospitalization for cesarean or vaginal delivery according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services diagnosis related groups.

Results

The dataset included 17,708 records meeting inclusion criteria. The majority of deliveries were among women aged 20 – 39 years (81.0%) and approximately one-half and one-third of the records were missing data for race and ethnicity, respectively. The largest proportion for expected payors were health maintenance organizations (33.7%), followed closely by Medicaid (29.6%). Preeclampsia was identified via ICD-10 code for 971 deliveries (5.5%) and eclampsia for 17 (0.1%). Among deliveries complicated by preeclampsia, 44.4% were cesarean while only 28.0% of deliveries without preeclampsia were cesarean.

Conclusion

Preeclampsia prevention is an important target of maternal health programming to reduce maternal morbidity in the Texas Panhandle.