PROtecting Maternal Brains From Injury and Stroke

Maternal neurological complications are a leading cause of postpartum severe maternal morbidity and maternal mortality (SMM/MM). The lack of biomarkers to identify women at highest risk of these rare, but devastating postpartum complications, including stroke, seizures, and posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome, has impeded efforts to prevent neurological SMM/MM. Impaired cerebral autoregulation may be such a biomarker. Preliminary results using transcranial Doppler (TCD) based techniques to quantify cerebral autoregulation have demonstrated severely impaired cerebral autoregulation in the postpartum period in some women. However, TCD is operator dependent, and cannot be used for extended monitoring due to discomfort. In contrast, near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is fully automated and can be continued for hours at the bedside. Identifying personalized blood pressure (BP) targets using NIRS has been shown to improve outcomes in acute stroke patients, another population with impaired cerebral autoregulation. However, this method has not been applied in postpartum women. The investigators are applying this novel approach to the management of postpartum preeclampsia (PEC) in a single-center, Phase II clinical trial, PROMIS (PROtecting Maternal brains from Injury and Stroke).