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What heart diseases afflict children? |
Approximately one in 10 or 12 children are born with a congenital heart defect.
Congenital heart defects include a number of conditions. There are hundreds of types and making a precise diagnosis is sometimes quite challenging. The common heart defects include:
- Holes or communications in the heart or great vessels: Examples of such holes in the heart include: atrial septal defect (ASD), ventricular septal defect (VSD), patent ductus arteriosus (PDA)
- Conditions resulting in the child becoming a blue baby: These conditions are also known as cyanotic heart defects. Common examples include tetralogy of Fallot’s (TOF) and transposition (TGA).
- Congenital narrowing of heart valves or vessels: Examples include congenital narrowing of the pulmonary or aortic valve.
Thirty percent of congenital heart defects are potentially life threatening early in life require and attention in infancy.
Rheumatic heart disease continues to afflict large numbers of school-going children and young adults in India and other developing countries. This condition seriously damages heart valves and many children eventually require an operation or balloon procedure in the cardiac catheterization laboratory. |
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How congenital heart diseases develop? |
In most cases we do not know what causes congenital heart disease to develop. The parent’s should not feel that it is their fault for having a child with this problem. Rarely, a viral infection in the mother during the first few months of pregnancy may produce a serious heart problem (for example if the mothers gets German Measles during the first three months of pregnancy, the child’s heart may not develop normally)
Heredity sometimes plays a role. More than one child in a family may have a congenital heart defect, but this is rare. Certain conditions that affect multiple organs, such as Down’s syndrome (Mongolism), can also affect the heart. Some drugs can also affect heart development if consumed during early pregnancy. Alcohol consumption can also affect heart development. |
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What are the common symptoms of heart disease in children? |
The possible pointers to heart disease in infants (less than one year age) include:
- Difficulty with feeding
- Excessive sweating
- Breathing difficulty
- Blueness of lips, fingers and toes
- Poor growth
- Frequent episodes of chest infection
Sometimes heart disease may be first identified during a routine check-up by your pediatrician. |
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What is required for care of children with heart disease? |
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Care of children with heart disease requires a highly coordinated effort from a team of specially trained personnel. Pediatric cardiologists, pediatric cardiac surgeons, intensive care physicians and intensive care nurses should ideally constitute this team. In additions, a variety of sophisticated and very expensive equipment are required. Establishing an infrastructure for care of children with heart disease involves substantial investments and few institutions in India are able to afford it. |
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Can heart defects be closed without surgery? |
| Many heart defects need an operation for their treatment and often this is an open-heart operation. Today newer developments in cardiac catheterization technology allow closure of selected patients with heart defects without an operation. This avoids the trauma of surgery and allows very rapid recovery. Examples of these heart defects include the atrial septal defect (ASD), the patent ductus arteriosus (PDA) and selected patients with ventricular septal defects.
The procedures are performed in the cardiac catheterization laboratory and require no more than a needle prick in the groin.
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What resources are available for treating children with heart defects in India? |
| At present less than a dozen institutions including AIMS support a comprehensive infrastructure for newborn and infant heart surgery in India. All of these institutions have a busy adult cardiac surgery programs and much of the infrastructure is shared by both the adult and pediatric cardiac services. Not more than 1500 neonatal and infant heart operations are performed in all of India every year. This would account for less than 2% of the affected population of newborns and infants in India.
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