high BP + proteinurea but no pre-eclampsia?

[kat82]

I've seen posts on other forums where women say that they have or had high blood pressure plus protein in their urine but it turned out not to be PE...or that they already know they have high BP plus protein and they're currently being tested for PE.

This confuses me. I thought the diagnostic criteria for PE simply were high blood pressure plus protein? Can anyone clarify? If there is some other criterion, what other interpretations might there be for high BP and protein?

Apologies if this is a dumb question.

[alexis]

My only thought is that they don't meet the specific criteria of 140/90 and 300mg. Other than that, I'm not sure what criteria their doctors could be using.

[MomTimesThree]

It's interesting you asked this question, because I meet diagnostic criteria (BP 140s and protein above 300), and earlier this week at my OB appointment my doctor said, I don't have pre-e (before was told yes, super-imposed when we first crossed the >300 protein level since I had early hypertension)... which took me a back, but like most stuff in the doctor's office I only processed it as I was leaving. I'm not terribly worried about the label since my treatment and monitoring are the same no matter what they call it)

I am very curious to hear from others with more experience about meeting diagnostic, but because of all underlying conditions (spilling protein and hypertension previous to 20 weeks). Is it the same etiology as someone without pre-exsisting conditions or is it different? Such a curious and complex disease!!

[caryn]

There may be a couple of different diseases that present under the umbrella "preeclampsia", we think - but they all get treated the same way and they all have the same diagnostic threshold. It's just that some of them move faster and require delivery more quickly.

Superimposed preeclampsia can move really, really fast when it's superimposed on chronic hypertension. That one tends to scare docs. But when it's superimposed on type II diabetes it can crawl along with a little proteinuria and hypertension around 140/90 for weeks.

One of these days we'll work out a better understanding of how the placenta is altering our ability to tolerate it, and then it will be more obvious what's going on here!