Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

There are no national studies of pregnancy-related critical illness and death in Canada. Although the maternal mortality rate has decreased significantly in Canada over the past three decades, there has been a recent trend towards increasing maternal age and potential attendant morbidity and mortality. Although heart dysfunction such as cardiomyopathy is one of leading causes of maternal morbidity, there has been no description of the incidence and outcome of pregnancy specific cardiomyopathy in the context of Canadian population, which is called peripartum cardiomyopathy. Our project is first Canadian Population based Study to explore significant circulatory disease specific to pregnancy and postpartum women.