FRIDAY, July 28, 2023 (HealthDay News) — About 60 percent of those with one and two or more cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors or adverse pregnancy outcomes (APOs) receive postpartum cardiovascular health (CVH) counseling, according to a study published in the July 25 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Natalie A. Cameron, M.D., M.P.H., from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, and colleagues examined the prevalence of self-reported CVH counseling during the postpartum visit in an analysis of data from 2016 to 2020 from the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System. The primary analysis included 167,705 individuals who attended a postpartum visit four to six weeks after delivery with available data on receipt of CVH counseling, self-reported prepregancy risk factors, and APOs.

The researchers found that for those with no CVD risk factors, the prevalence of self-reported postpartum CVH counseling decreased from 56.2 to 52.8 per 100 individuals from 2016 to 2020 (annual percent change [APC], −1.4 percent/year). For those with one and two or more risk factors, there was a decrease from 58.5 to 57.3 per 100 individuals (APC, −0.7 percent/year) and from 61.9 to 59.8 per 100 individuals (APC, −0.8 percent/year), respectively. Compared with those with no risk factors, reporting receipt of counseling was modestly higher among those with one and with two or more risk factors (rate ratios, 1.05 and 1.11, respectively).

“Prevalence of self-reported counseling was stable or declined slightly from 2016 through 2020, despite increasing prevalence of prepregnancy cardiovascular risk factors and APOs, identifying a key opportunity to improve CVH counseling during the postpartum period,” the authors write

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