Surgical results following reparative surgery for congenital heart disease in the neonatal period have dramatically improved in recent years. This increased survival is largely due to improvements in the care delivered in the intensive care unit setting so that many children who would have not survived in the past are now able to survive until…
Mitral valve prolapse is a very common anomaly, seen in up to 2.4% of otherwise healthy children and adults. The occurrence is more common in some families where there are clusters of people affected by mitral valve prolapse and often with different degrees of prolapse in different members of the same family. On-going follow-up is…
One of the questions parents ask often is whether their children breathing or heart rate are too high. This is a very important question as most current early warning scores use such variables to flag up children who may be unwell and in danger. However, breathing rate and heart rate change considerably from the newborn…
Children with congenital heart disease (CHD) sometimes require surgical treatment for non cardiac problems. Actually, children with CHD are more likely to require surgery for non cardiac problems than children with no cardiac problems. This is due to the fact that not infrequently abnormalities in multiple systems can be present at the same time. In…
Genetic and congenital cardiac diseases are the leading cause of sudden death. Every week in the UK there are 12 cardiac sudden deaths in young people. There is considerable debate on who should be screened with most health care systems recommending a broad pre-participation screening, inclusive of 12-lead ECG, only in children and young adults…
Duchenne (DMD) and Becker muscular dystrophies (BMD) are rare inherited conditions where there is progressive skeletal muscle degeneration and loss and premature death. The conditions typically also involve the heart where the loss of muscle causes the heart to weaken and progressively fail in its pumping function. This cardiac pump failure can be detected by…