[Acute central neurologic complications and the pregnancy-puerperal status. 105 cases in an intensive care unit. Contribution to the study of the relation between pregnancy toxemia and cerebral vascular accidents].

Central neurological pathology in the course of puerperium was studied in 105 observations. One could distinguish: --meeting pathology (tumoral, metabolic, infectious processes) 12 cases, --cerebral vascular accidents (arterial, venous...) 30 cases, These two groups corresponded to a pathology without any obvious connection with gravidic toxemia. --eclamptic or not eclamptic toxemia with encephalopathy: 21 cases, --finally, toxemia associated to or complicated with focused neurological syndromes: 42 cases. Concerning cerebral vascular accidents, one could verify the importance of hemorrhagical accidents (13 cases: 3 subdurhematoma, 4 sub-arachnoid hemorrhages, 6 intra-cerebral hematoma (2 of them corresponded to previous affections revealed by the hemorrhage) (angioma, chorioepithelioma, metastases) and thrombo-embolic accidents (16 cases) corresponding especially to arterial thromboses, the frequency of which seems more important than the frequency of venous thromboses. Any generalized or focused central neurological accident sets the problem of toxemia but is not obligatory toxemic. An associated disorder of hemostasis (hypercoagulability, consumption coagulopathy) has to be searched for.