TY - CHAP M1 - Book, Section TI - Physiologic and Pharmacologic Changes in Pregnancy A1 - Dunn, Holly A1 - Costantine, Maged M. A2 - Pacheco, Luis D. A2 - Saade, George R. A2 - Hankins, Gary D.V. PY - 2015 T2 - Maternal Medicine AB - Pregnant women commonly use prescribed and over-the-counter medications with the average US and Canadian pregnant woman using more than two drugs during the course of their pregnancy. Almost one third of them used four or more drugs.1 One reason for this is that some women enter into pregnancy with preexisting medical conditions that require pharmacotherapy; and for many others, pregnancy itself can lead to medical conditions such as nausea, vomiting, and gestational diabetes that require treatment. Moreover, human pregnancy is characterized by profound anatomic and physiologic changes that affect virtually all systems and organs and induce profound alterations to the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamics properties of many medications. Many of these changes begin since early gestation. Whereas, some of these changes are secondary to hormonal changes in pregnancy, others are essential to support the growing fetus and the pregnant mother. Understanding pregnancy physiology is essential to the clinician because of the potential implications on pharmacotherapy during pregnancy. The goal of this chapter is to summarize some of the systems, physiologic changes during pregnancy that may affect medication pharmacokinetics. SN - PB - McGraw-Hill Education CY - New York, NY Y2 - 2024/03/29 UR - obgyn.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1115521441 ER -