Hypertension and pregnancy: expert consensus statement from the French Society of Hypertension, an affiliate of the French Society of Cardiology.

High blood pressure in pregnancy remains, by its complications, the leading cause of morbidity as well as maternal and fetal mortality. The frequency (5-10% of pregnancies) and the potential severity of this disease, for both mother and child, encourage to standardize and to optimize our medical practices. If the short-term complications for the mother and child are well known, long-term ones for the mother are beginning to be better identified. The onset of hypertension during pregnancy disrupts the classic organization of health care and requires the intervention of the general practitioner and/or an obstetrician, a gynecologist, a midwife, a cardiologist, a nephrologist. There is not always a care coordinator, and decisions are sometimes taken with delay. This is what drove the French Society of Hypertension, in partnership with the French National College of Gynecologists-Obstetricians, to develop a consensus proposing easy-to-use guidelines. Educating women and all health professionals to hypertension and its management, in line with current scientific data, is one of the major challenges of this consensus.