Objective: To evaluate the microcirculatory blood flow in severe preeclampsia and compare it with healthy pregnant and non-pregnant women controls, using a portable intravital-microscopy technique.
Methods: Using a side-stream dark field (SDF) device, we prospectively evaluated the sublingual microcirculatory blood flow before placental delivery in 40 women with severe preeclampsia (PE-group) complicated (n=8) or not (n=32) with HELLP syndrome, 40 healthy pregnant women (HP-group) matched by gestational and chronological age, and 20 healthy non-pregnant women (NP-group). Microvessels were classified as large or small using a cutoff value of 20μm and those with continuous flow were considered as normal while sluggish, intermittent and stopped flows were considered as abnormal.