Guidance
This guideline covers diagnosing and managing hypertension (high blood pressure), including pre-eclampsia, during pregnancy, labour and birth. It also includes advice for women with hypertension who wish to conceive and women who have had a pregnancy complicated by hypertension. It aims to improve care during pregnancy, labour and birth for women and their babies.
For information on related topics, see our women's and reproductive health summary page.
In April 2023, we updated our recommendations on when to offer placental growth factor (PLGF)-based testing for pre-eclampsia, in line with our diagnostics guidance on PLGF-based testing for pre-eclampsia. See the update information for more details.
We’ve created a series of visual summaries to explain assessment, treatment and other aspects of care for various conditions relating to hypertension in pregnancy. These are available to download from tools and resources.
Recommendations
This guideline includes new and updated recommendations on:
- assessing proteinuria
- managing chronic hypertension in pregnancy and gestational hypertension
- managing pre-eclampsia, including severe pre-eclampsia in critical care settings
- treatment during the postnatal period (including breastfeeding)
- advice and follow-up in community care
It also includes recommendations on:
- reducing the risk of hypertension in pregnancy
- fetal monitoring and care of women during labour and birth
Who is it for?
- Healthcare professionals
- Women who develop hypertension during pregnancy, who have hypertension and wish to conceive, and who have had a pregnancy complicated by hypertension, and their relatives and carers
Guideline development process
How we develop NICE guidelines
This guideline updates and replaces NICE guideline CG107 (August 2010).
Your responsibility
The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals and practitioners are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or the people using their service. It is not mandatory to apply the recommendations, and the guideline does not override the responsibility to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual, in consultation with them and their families and carers or guardian.
All problems (adverse events) related to a medicine or medical device used for treatment or in a procedure should be reported to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency using the Yellow Card Scheme.
Local commissioners and providers of healthcare have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual professionals and people using services wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with complying with those duties.
Commissioners and providers have a responsibility to promote an environmentally sustainable health and care system and should assess and reduce the environmental impact of implementing NICE recommendations wherever possible.