Preeclampsia is a multifactorial disease characterized by high blood pressure and proteinuria after the 20th week of pregnancy. D-Dimer is a useful diagnostic tool for thrombotic conditions because its plasma concentration has a high negative predictive value for venous thromboembolism. This study aims to evaluate D-dimer level in preeclampsia and normotensive pregnant women. This cross sectional analytic study was conducted at the Obstetrics and Gynaecology department, Dhaka Medical College

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... pital to evaluate the D-dimer level in preeclampsia and normal pregnancy, during July 2014 to June 2015. A total of 90 patients, out of them 45 were preeclamptic women considered as group A and 45 were normotensive pregnant women considered as group B. A P-value <0.05 was taken as minimum level of significance. Among 90 respondents, highest incidence was belonging to age 21-25 years. The mean age was found 25.84±4.7 which was higher in preeclamptia than normotensive pregnant women 23.80±2.8 years (p<0.05). Primigravida were significantly commoner in preeclampsia than that in normal pregnancy. The mean blood pressure was significantly higher in preeclamptic women than normotensive pregnant women (systolic 151.3+9.07 vs 114.0+ 8.36 mm Hg and diastolic 97.11+ 8.01 vs 73.55 +4.47 mm Hg, p<0.05). Plasma D-dimer level demonstrated their significant presence in preeclamptic women (44.4%) than that in the normotensive women (6.6%) p<0.05. Estimation of Odds Ratio demonstrates that preeclamptic women have 11-fold (95% of CI=3.0 -41.5) higher risk of having plasma D-dimer >0.5 µg /ml than that of normal pregnant women. Correlation analysis found that D-dimer have positive correlation with both systolic (r= 0.571, p <0.001) and diastolic blood pressure (r= 0.514, p <0.05) of preeclamptic women. The study concludes that D-dimer level considered to be a potential bio-marker for hematologic and fibrinolytic changes occurs in preeclampsia.