GROWTH PARAMETERS IN RELATION TO SEVERITY OF VSD IN CHILDREN WITH COMPENSATED CONGENITAL HEART DISEASE

Abstract

Congenital heart disease presents structural or functional heart disease that is present at birth. VSD constitutes the most common cardiac anomaly of congenital heart lesions. Nonnal growth can occur only if the individual is healthy, but long standing illness leads to marked change in growth rate. Standards of growth are based on accurate measurements made on large, nationally representative samples of children and specific centiles have been calculated for both height and weight. In this study, fifty randomly selected prepubertal children with isolated VSD attending the Cardiology Clinic of Alexandria University Children Hospital, Alexandria, Egypt, were the subjects.: Also, one hundred age-matched normal children served as controls for the growth data. Patients and controls were subjected to nutritional assessment using the recall method, initial anthropometric measurements including weight, height, and MAC, radiological assessment of bone age, complete blood count, measurement of oxygen saturation, and echocardiography examination for the diagnosis of VSD and determination of its severity. Patients were followed up for their growth data and a second anthropometric measurement was assessed after 6 months.