Timing of treatment for precardiac disease

  The incidence of precocious heart disease is about 0.8% of newborns, and the life of some affected children is terminated before the age of 1 year. It is a local anatomical abnormality of the heart caused by a disorder in the formation of the heart and large blood vessels during human embryonic development (within the first 2-3 months of pregnancy), or a failure to close channels that should close automatically after birth (which is normal in the fetus). The most common and most prevalent of these in clinical practice are ventricular septal defects, atrial septal defects, arteriovenous ductus arteriosus, and tetralogy of Fallot. Thankfully, most of these common precocious heart diseases are curable and can still give children a healthy childhood.  The timing of “weaving” Some people may ask if it is possible to cure precocious heart disease without surgery and medication. The answer is no. In addition to the possibility of self-healing of individual small ventricular septal defects before the age of 5, the majority of precardiac disease still requires surgery, and, as long as the heart disease is detected early and treated in a timely manner, most children can grow and develop, marry and have children as normal people.  Theoretically, the earlier surgery is done, the better. For common precardiac diseases, surgery is generally appropriate around the age of one. The cost of atrial septal defect and ventricular septal defect is usually 20,000 to 30,000, that of tetralogy of Fallot is 40,000 to 60,000, and that of patent ductus arteriosus is about 12,000. For children with low age, low weight and poor development, the cost will be higher due to the long recovery time after surgery.  Many children come to the hospital because of recurrent lung infections that are difficult to be cured before they are diagnosed with precordial disease, and the doctor finds a heart murmur on auscultation. Different types of precardiac disease may have different clinical symptoms such as choking and coughing during feeding, developmental delay, purple lips, pestle fingers, squatting, etc. Further auxiliary diagnostics such as X-ray, ultrasound, ECG, cardiac CT, MRI, cardiac catheterization, etc. are needed to clearly diagnose the type of precardiac disease and whether surgery is indicated. Among them, cardiac ultrasound is the most convenient and effective method to diagnose precocious heart disease, and is also commonly used for the screening of precocious heart disease.  The treatment of precordial disease includes traditional open-heart surgery and interventional procedures. Open-heart surgery is to correct structural abnormalities of the heart through direct vision surgery. This surgical method is the most direct and suitable for a wide range of patients, and most children with precocious heart can be treated by this method, but open-heart surgery is relatively large surgical incision, and most of them need cardiac arrest to do it. After surgery, patients can basically reach a normal state through a period of recovery. Some of these patients with complex precordial and those with advanced precordial development, a significant proportion of them cannot be completely cured, then some need staged surgery, some can only use palliative surgery to alleviate symptoms, improve quality of life and prolong life, some even need to do heart transplantation or combined heart-lung transplantation.  Minimally invasive surgery has developed rapidly in recent years, because minimally invasive and non-invasive is a trend in the development of surgery. At present, some patients with simple atrial defect, ventricular defect, and arteriovenous insufficiency can adopt minimally invasive interventional surgery, which does not require large incisions or cardiac arrest, but disposes of catheters into large vessels in the groin and places blockers to block the abnormal channels inside the heart. However, the interventional procedure has some limitations, as it requires strong tissue at the edge of the defect to fix the blocker, but the fine blood vessels in children may easily cause damage to the femoral artery lining and thrombosis in the lower extremities, and the blocking process may damage some structures inside the heart, and the blocker may also fall off, causing blood clots and infections. With some requests from the parents of the children such as small incision and thoroughness, many hospitals now also carry out small axillary incision surgery, which only has a 5 cm incision in the axilla after surgery. This method has a small surgical field of view and is more difficult to operate, so the scope of application is not as good as conventional open-heart surgery, but some patients with atrial and ventricular defects can use this surgical method.  Do a good job of tertiary prevention of precardiac disease Primary prevention: reduce or eliminate the risk factors of precardiac disease. Since the causative factors of precardiac disease are not yet fully understood, prevention cannot be carried out fundamentally, but some influencing factors can be identified, such as infection, drugs, fetal compression, preeclampsia in early pregnancy, maternal malnutrition, diabetes, phenylketonuria, hypercalcemia, and the influence of radiation. Therefore, strengthening maternal health care, especially active prevention of rubella, influenza and other rubella viral diseases and avoidance of all factors related to the onset of the disease in early pregnancy, is of positive significance in the prevention of preeclampsia.  Secondary prevention: screening for precocious heart disease during fetal life (fetal heart ultrasound can be performed after 20 weeks of pregnancy), and for fetuses with serious and uncorrectable precocious heart disease detected, necessary eugenic guidance should be given and pregnancy should be terminated in time, which is the focus of prevention and treatment at present.  Tertiary prevention: to improve the treatment outcome of children with precocious heart disease. Precocious heart disease is highly treatable, with a high cure rate and good long-term results, and should be diagnosed early and treated at the right time.