00:01
This question asks us to describe the mechanism by which preeclampsia or elevated blood pressure during pregnancy develops.
00:08
So there's actually a number of different causes.
00:12
So the first cause is it's thought that there might be insufficient blood flow to the uterus.
00:26
So if there is insufficient blood flow, and we think of this as our volume going down, right, so the volume of blood decreases.
00:46
That means our arteries are going to contract, to counteract this.
00:53
And why would they do this? well, because with a decrease in blood volume, the blood pressure also goes down.
01:01
And as a way to counteract this decreasing blood pressure, we're going to try to increase it.
01:06
So then we try to work against this by increasing bp by contracting our.
01:15
Vessels, our arteries, our capillaries, so the peripheral blood pressure is going to go up.
01:23
But here's the thing.
01:25
Although this is going to help with the uterus, right, we're going to cause global blood pressure to also increase.
01:36
So maybe if the uterus is sensing that there's low blood flow, maybe it's things, well, we need to increase it so we have optimal pressure.
01:42
But this caused an increase across the whole body, therefore, that totally, body and global body blood pressure is going to increase.
01:51
There might also be damage to the blood vessels.
02:00
So maybe we can't sense the blood pressure properly...