Most women experience some type of morning sickness during pregnancy, but some women develop a far more serious condition.
Hyperemesis gravidarum (HG), which causes severe nausea and vomiting during pregnancy, affects as many as 3 percent of pregnancies, leading to over 167,000 emergency department visits each year in the U.S.
Until intravenous hydration was introduced in the 1950s, it was the leading cause of maternal death. Now, it is the second leading cause, after preterm labor, of hospitalization during pregnancy.
And yet, the disease is neither well-understood nor well-known, even with the flurry of headlines when it was announced that the Duchess of Cambridge during her pregnancies suffered from the condition.
