Neurología y embarazo

Abstract

Pregnancy produces a series of physiological changes in women which may trigger several neurologic pathologies or decompensation in pre-existing diseases. There are neurologic complications in pathological pregnancies such as: Wernicke's encephalopathy; posterior reversible encephalopathy which is a form of eclampsia; previous diseases such as epilepsies that entail a high obstetric risk due to the possibility of presenting embriopathies associated to the use of antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) and also because of the risk of a convulsive crisis in the fetus; cerebrovascular diseases which are rare although with high maternal mortality; extrapyramidal pathologies which are infrequent except for the chorea gravidarum and the restless legs syndrome; cerebral neoplasms in which due to haemodynamic changes at the end of the second quarter and the increase of estrogen and progesterone many tumors may raise their volume; and peripheral alterations like myasthenia gravis (MG); intervertebral disk displacement and entrapment neuropathies like carpal tunnel syndrome and meralgia paresthetica. Anyhow because of cellular immunity in multiple sclerosis pregnancy is protected from new outbreaks.