Development and validation of a prediction model on severe maternal outcomes among pregnant women with pre-eclampsia: a 10-year cohort study

Pre-eclampsia is a severe hypertensive disorder of pregnancy and could lead to severe maternal morbidities and death. Our study aimed to develop and validate a prognostic prediction model for severe maternal outcomes among Chinese population with pre-eclampsia. We conducted a 10-year cohort study in a referral center by collecting all pregnant women who diagnosed as pre-eclampsia and delivered from 2005 to 2014. A composite of severe maternal outcomes, including maternal near-miss defined by World Health Organization, cortical blindness/retinal detachment, temporary facial paralysis and maternal death, were adopted. We used logistic regression model to develop Model 1 by retaining the predictors of p < 0.05, and further conducted Model 2 by adding quadratic terms and interaction terms to Model 1. We undertook a bootstrapping validation and estimated the model performance. A total of 397 pregnant women suffered from severe maternal outcomes among 2,793 eligible participants, with an incidence of 14.21% (95% confidence interval (CI) 12.91%–15.51%). Of 13 predictors were finally selected in Model 1. Combined with quadratic and interactive terms, the Model 2 showed higher area under the ROC curve (82.2%, 95% CI 79.6%–84.7%) and good calibration. By the bootstrapping validation, similar model performances were present.