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Abstract
Hypertension is a medical term referred to high blood pressure (BP). It is one of the leading medical complications in the world. BP is when the pressures in the blood vessels is too high with systolic and diastolic greater than or equal to140 mmHg and greater than or equal to 90 mmHg respectively. In Nigeria, hypertension has a prevalence greater than 5% and contributes largely to various health disorders. It has been a leading cause of maternal mortality accounting for 29% deaths in tertiary hospitals in Nigeria. Hypertensive statuses of pregnant women are: normal – without high blood pressure, gestational hypertension – with hypertension after 20 weeks of pregnancy, without proteinuria and return to normal within first 10 days of delivery, pre-eclampsia – with hypertension after 20 weeks of pregnancy and proteinuria and eclampsia – with hypertension after 20 weeks of pregnancy, proteinuria, seizure and convulsion. Classification is a valuable statistics technique implemented in various fields; including health and medicine for determining group of a subject, but the classification of hypertensive statuses of pregnant women is not given much attention. Therefore, this study explored a modified Multivariate Multiple Linear Fisher’s Discriminant model, to classify hypertensive statuses of pregnant women into their appropriate groups and evaluate the degree of accuracy of the classification. The data for the study was collected from the Antenatal Clinic of Specialist Hospital, Sokoto. The study reveals that proteinuria, body mass index, systolic blood pressure (mmHg), age (years) and temperature (0C) were the leading factors in discriminating among hypertensive statuses of pregnant women. The modified model indicated 90% power of classification with overall accuracies from both trained and tested data of more than 80%. This study recommended the use of the model in ANC, Specialist Hospital Sokoto, that the model could contribute in saving lives of foetuses and their mothers.