The contemporary cardio-obstetrics team: The path to improving maternal outcomes in high-risk patients

The field of Cardio-Obstetrics is focused on mitigating cardiovascular risk among pregnant and post-partum individuals. Due to the complexity of caring for pregnant people with acquired or congenital cardiac disease, patients with these conditions are increasingly managed in multidisciplinary Cardio-Obstetrics teams, which are now considered essential to optimize maternal care in high-risk patients. Cardio-Obstetrics teams are composed of multiple subspecialists and have at least 3 roles: (1) provide preconception counseling and risk stratification to patients with known cardiac disease, (2) organize prenatal and postpartum care for patients who develop or present with cardiac disease during pregnancy, and (3) plan for emergent care for patients whose pregnancy “unmasks” cardiac disease, whether acquired disease or an unknown ACHD. Here we describe our experience at Einstein/Montefiore to aid other institutions in developing their own programs.