How to detect pediatric congenital heart disease early

  Congenital heart disease is a serious disease that endangers children’s health and even life, and should be detected and treated early. According to statistics, there are about 10-20,000 children with congenital heart disease among the newborns born in Guangdong Province every year, only a small number of them are diagnosed early and can be treated surgically, but most of them are not detected in time due to various reasons and miss the best time or even lose the opportunity of surgical treatment, which not only affects the growth and development of the children, but also brings heavy burden to the family and society. However, many children with congenital heart disease are generally “normal” after delivery, and there are no abnormal findings during the examination by doctors, but they are only discovered by chance when they have a physical examination or suffer from other diseases later.  The former mainly includes transposition of the great arteries, tetralogy of Fallot, endocardial cushion defect, ventricular double outlet, etc. Because these diseases are often combined with severe cyanosis such as cyanosis of fingers and toes (purple-black), black lips and other symptoms, they can be easily detected and treated early; the latter mainly includes congenital atrial septal defect, ventricular septal defect, arterial The latter mainly includes congenital atrial septal defect, ventricular septal defect, arterial catheter failure, mild pulmonary stenosis, etc. These diseases can be completely corrected according to current surgical techniques, and the growth and development after surgery is basically equivalent to that of normal children, but the opportunity of early diagnosis and treatment is lost because of no special symptoms or atypical symptoms. In fact, if parents can carefully observe their children’s daily activities, it is entirely possible to achieve early detection and early treatment.  Most children with congenital heart disease have significantly slower development than children of the same age, slower weight gain, slimmer body shape and easier sweating. If nutritional deficiency or rickets is excluded, it is highly likely that congenital heart disease causes cardiac insufficiency and insufficient blood supply to the heart.  Second, shortness of breath, breath-holding, often choking and coughing when feeding, refusal to eat, and possible bulge in the left precordial area of the chest are all manifestations of cardiac insufficiency.  Third, the child’s resistance is low, there are often repeated episodes of upper respiratory tract infections, and in severe cases, wheezing, hoarseness, etc. These are never caused by the common cold, and it is difficult to achieve results with conventional anti-cold medicine treatment.  Fourth, older children are easy to fatigue, endurance, physical strength are poor. Some serious children can have blue lips, swelling, etc.  When parents find any of the above symptoms and does not improve for a long time, should pay great attention to, promptly take the child to the hospital to do X-ray chest, electrocardiogram, echocardiography and cardiac catheterization and other examinations, and strive to early detection, early diagnosis, early treatment.