The remote prognostic significance of the level of blood pressure in pregnancy.

The diagnosis of preeclampsia is often erroneous in primigravidas and usually so in multiparas. Gestational hypertension, defined as acute hypertension without proteinuria or abnormal edema, is often misdiagnosed as mild preeclampsia. Several follow-up studies are cited as evidence for the conclusions that (1) eclampsia and "true" preeclampsia seldom if ever cause chronic hypertension in women who otherwise never would have developed it; (2) gestational hypertension often is a sign of latent essential hypertension unmasked by pregnancy, and as such it often portends later chronic hypertension; and (3) normotensive pregnancies indicate a low prevalence of later chronic hypertension, and if it does develop, it usually does so at an age later than the average time of onset.