Congenital Heart Defect Management

Congenital Heart Defect (CHD) is also known as Congenital Heart Disease (CHD). However, the American Heart Association considers the term “defect” more accurate. And it is indeed, since this kind of heart ailment occurs when the heart, or the blood vessels near it, do not develop normally before birth.

Schiller wants to offer you some tools to help you keep on improving the life of you patients. We will cover some aspects that can be useful to take into account when approaching to this heart condition.

Congenital Heart Defect (CHD) in numbers

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Congenital Heart Defects (CHDs) affect around 40,000 births per year in the United States. And the most common problem is the ventricular septal defect (VSD). From those, about 1 in every 4 babies suffer Critical Heart Defect (aka Critical Congenital Heart Disease).

These are some more statistics about this cardiac problem:

40,000 babies with CDH are born each year in the US
16,800 of those babies suffer a ventricular septal defect
4.2% of all neonatal deaths are related to CHD
41,494 deaths related to CHDs during 1999–2006
48% of those deaths occurred when babies were younger than 1 year of age

Source: Centers of Disease Control and Prevention / Data and Statistics on Congenital Heart Defects

Fortunately, appropriate medical care and available treatment have improved thanks to the extensive research about this subject. Therefore, most babies and children with Congenital Heart Defects (CHDs) are now living into adulthood as healthy as possible.

Even patients with Critical Congenital Heart Defects are having a new chance. Some CHDs may be diagnosed during pregnancy when suspected, however, since these types of heart defects lead to low levels of oxygen, in most states in the US, pulse oximetry screening at least 24 hours after birth is now a routine procedure. Newborn screening for Critical CHDs has been key to identify babies with these conditions before signs or symptoms are evident, so they can receive prompt care and treatment. Timely care avoids death early in life and it may help prevent disability.

Source: Centers of Disease Control and Prevention / Data and Statistics on Congenital Heart Defects

Schiller helps to save lives

People with underlying conditions in the function and structure of the heart are more prone to rhythm problems. Schiller´s devices have the best swiss technology to help physicians to treat and follow-up cardiac patients. Our resting EKGs have been designed with high quality acquisition to aid the clinical precision of the diagnosis. They are suitable for neonatal, pediatric, and adult patients. You may consider the following devices:

CARDIOVIT FT-1 has a 32,000 Hz sampling rate to detect any rythm problem. Besides, its high acquisition ensures the best signal quality making it a perfect device for pediatric EKGs.

CARDIOVIT AT-102 G2 is a resting EKG that can record up to 10 minutes of continuous EKG. It´s high sampling rate, bandwidth, and signal quality makes it perfect por pediatric EKGs