Paroxysmal tachycardia in pregnancy.

There are conflicting views regarding the incidence of paroxysmal tachycardia in pregnancy. Jensen (1938) concluded from a review of the literature that there had been only 19 cases reported up to 1938in which the diagnosis was beyond reasonable doubt, and he thought that the condition was rare during pregnancy. On the other hand, Campbell (1947) was of the opinion that paroxysmal tachycardia is far more common in pregnancy than is generally recognized. The purpose of this paper is to review briefly the relevant papers and to analyse ten personally observed cases. Campbell and Elliott (1939) discussed the influence of pregnancy in 7 of a series of 100 patients with paroxysmal tachycardia. Jensen et al. (1940) observed three cases of paroxysmal tachycardia in a series of 108 pregnant patients with organic heart disease. Hamilton and Thomson (1941) stated that they were able to make a satisfactory diagnosis of paroxysmal tachycardia during pregnancy in 13 out of 781 patients with rheumatic heart disease. Browning and Clark (1941) reported two cases of paroxysmal tachycardia occurring during pregnancy. Single cases were reported by Weyler and Dustin (1942), Lian et al. (1948), and by Abbas and Guild (1951). Vander Veer and Kuo (1950) studied 409 pregnant patients with heart disease and found paroxysmal tachycardia in six. They considered this to be a high incidence and suggested that pregnancy may predispose to paroxysmal tachycardia.