Due Date & Gestational Age Calculator

Why a stroke site hosts a due-date calculator

Because when a pregnant patient arrives with a neurologic emergency, gestational age is the first triage variable and nobody at the bedside should be counting weeks on their fingers. Pregnancy-associated stroke clusters in the third trimester and — above all — the puerperium: preeclampsia/eclampsia and its overlap with PRES and RCVS, cerebral venous thrombosis (peak risk in the weeks after delivery), peripartum cardiomyopathy embolism, and the rare but catastrophic pituitary apoplexy all live on this clock. Preeclampsia by definition requires ≥20 weeks' gestation; a hypertensive seizure at 16 weeks is a different differential than the same seizure at 36 weeks.

Gestational age changes the neurology playbook

Imaging: MRI without gadolinium is the preferred cross-sectional modality throughout pregnancy; noncontrast head CT when speed demands it is acceptable at any gestational age with shielding — fetal dose from a head CT is negligible — while gadolinium and iodinated contrast are used only when the answer changes management now. Treatment: pregnancy is a relative — not absolute — consideration for thrombolysis, decided case by case; mechanical thrombectomy case series in pregnancy are reassuring; for CVT, LMWH is standard through pregnancy (warfarin is teratogenic in T1 and avoided; DOACs are avoided throughout). Blood pressure: severe-range pressures in preeclampsia get treated urgently (labetalol, nicardipine, hydralazine), with magnesium for eclampsia prophylaxis — and the postpartum patient with thunderclap headache is RCVS/CVT until proven otherwise. Every one of those branch points starts with the number this page computes.