Women who develop pre-eclampsia may face a wide variety of heart problems long after they give birth, a research review concludes.

Researchers from Western Health in Victoria examined results from 13 studies that measured cardiac function by transthoracic echocardiography between six months and 18 years following a pregnancy complicated by pre‐eclampsia.

In the study, about 19% of women with a history of pre-eclampsia developed diastolic dysfunction, compared with 5.4% of women with uncomplicated pregnancies.

With a history of pre-eclampsia, about 25% of women went on to develop heart failure within 4-10 years of giving birth, compared with 7% of women with uncomplicated pregnancies, the researchers wrote in the Australasian Journal of Ultrasound Medicine.