M. Yogi 1 , K. Vasudev 2 , Venkatramana 3
ACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES In this post genomic era, congenital heart diseases (CHD) are still the most common and most lethal of all birth defects in children. The genetic basis is expressed in the form of concomitant occurrence of extracardiac malformations (ECM) which may occur alone or as a part of a syndrome. The present study was undertaken with the main objectives as to find the burden of CHDs in the hospital’s admission and to find the prevalence of occurrence of clinically recognizable extracardiac malformations associated with CHDs. METHODS This was a cross-sectional hospital based observational study, done in a tertiary pediatric referral hospital, between the time period August 2013 and September 2014. Patients admitted to the pediatric general wards, PICU and NICU, either with a diagnosis of CHD or in whom a diagnosis of CHD was made after admission, were included in the study. The patients were clinically examined in detail for associated ECM, when present patients were grouped as either belonging to a clinically recognizable genetic syndrome or as an isolated occurrence of ECM. RESULTS The hospital admission rate was found to be 16.7 per 1000 pediatric hospital admissions. 31% of the patients with CHDs were found to have an associated significant ECM. INTERPRETATION AND CONCLUSION A high rate of hospital admission were found for CHDs in the pediatric setting, underscoring the need for improvement of pediatric cardiology infrastructure in the Indian scenario; This also undermines the importance of recognizing these anomalies and associated syndromes for complete evaluation of the patient
