Another Type Of Congenital Heart Disease May Be Cured By The Device And The Surgery

Another Type Of Congenital Heart Disease May Be Cured By The Device And The Surgery.
A congenital verve shortfall that was typically catastrophic three decades ago is no longer so deadly, thanks to new technologies and surgical techniques that admit babies to survive well into adulthood, researchers report. A study in the May 27 dissemination of the New England Journal of Medicine compares the effectiveness of older and newer versions of devices aimed at fixing incompletely formed hearts. The writing-room finds both performing equally well over three years.

It's a "landmark" study, "one that we've never had before in congenital hub disease," said Dr Gail D Pearson, kingpin of the Adult and Pediatric Cardiac Research Program at the US National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which financed the effort. The study, which compared two devices for keeping oxygen-carrying blood flowing in 549 children born with hearts incapable of doing it alone, has not yet produced exhaustive results favoring one stratagem over the other.

But the probing is indeed just beginning. "Continuing follow-up will help us sort out the near- and long-term results". Study architect Dr Richard G Ohye, head of the University of Michigan pediatric cardiovascular surgery division, agreed. "Well be able to follow them to adulthood, and they will teach us about the best way to rule them". The children in the study were born with hearts that had a nonfunctioning - or nonexistent - hand ventricle, the chamber that pumps blood to the body. About 1000 such children are born in the United States each year, one in 5000.