Practitioners of obstetrics, maternal-fetal medicine and consultants in other branches of medicine who help provide excellent care to pregnant patients with hypertensive complications of pregnancy will welcome this compendium about HELLP Syndrome. Drawing upon the expertise of 37 contributors from 15 institutions and four countries, this book summarises the state of the science and practice for patients with HELLP syndrome. On a global basis, what we call HELLP syndrome accounts for hundreds to thousands of maternal deaths and is responsible for many more thousands of patients that suffer "near miss" mortality, which we more properly term "severe maternal morbidity". Our understanding of this pregnancy scourge -- the basic science or bench aspects -- is still relatively inadequate to fully comprehend the pathogenesis and the pathophysiology of this condition as it relates to its close relative, the syndromic disorder of preeclampsia. Although a corticosteroid-based management scheme has shown great promise in practice and has a strong physiologic basis, there remains a need for a high quality, large-scale (1000+ patients) constructed, prospective placebo-controlled clinical trial involving a heterogeneous patient population to fully and objectively evaluate this approach to practice. The need and the urgency are great given the risk of HELLP to mothers and babies.
James N Martin, Jr, MD was Professor of OBGYN, Director of the Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine for the Winfred L. Wiser Hospital for Women & Infants, and Vice Chair for Research and Academic Development at the University of Mississippi Hospitals and Clinics in Jackson until he retired from full-time clinical practice on December 1, 2014. He holds a BS degree from Wake Forest University and an MD degree from the University of North Carolina. After OBGYN residency at Chapel Hill, NC and two fellowships, one in Stockholm, Sweden for the World Health Organization in reproductive physiology and the other in Dallas for maternal-fetal medicine subspecialty education and training at Parkland Hospital, Dr. Martin was an active clinician, educator, administrator and investigator with a primary focus of interest in hypertensive complications of pregnancy. He has more than 700 scientific publications and communications of various types to his credit over the past 41 years. He is past president of the North American Society for the Study of Hypertension in Pregnancy 1997-2000, the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine 2000-2001 and the American College and Congress of OBGYN from 2010 to 2013. Most recently Dr. Martin has been published in the area of obstetric management of patients with hypertensive and hematologic disorders of pregnancy, especially preeclampsia, eclampsia and HELLP syndrome.
