Pre-eclampsia affects 3% of all pregnancies in Australia and is a major cause of maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality worldwide. The current approach to screening for PE is based on the identification of risk factors from maternal characteristics and medical history. This approach, however, fails to identify a high proportion of cases of PE and does not provide individualised, patient-specific results.
In this lecture, the latest evidence on different methods to identify women at increased risk of PE in the first trimester of pregnancy (11-14 weeks) will be discussed, as well as the current evidence regarding different preventative strategies to reduce the risk of PE in high-risk women, with particular focus on the use of aspirin based on the results and secondary analyses of the Aspirin for Evidence-Based Pre-eclampsia Prevention (ASPRE) trial.