By maitri
Indira is a 12 year old girl staying in rural areas of Karnataka. She is a pretty, active child, studying in class IV and good in her studies. She was good in everything except school sports. She experienced mild shortness of breath while sprinting and therefore avoided competitive sports. A school health camp was organized in her city where the doctor heard an unusual sound called ‘murmur’. She was asked to visit a cardiologist to evaluate the murmur.
Her family took her to Bangalore for check up. There she was diagnosed to have born with a serious heart disease called “Corrected Transposition of Great Arteries”. The four chambers of her heart were connected abnormally to each other and the arteries were also attached to the wrong chambers. On the top of that, her heart was on right side.
It was shocking to learn that Indira had such a major problem. But the doctor explained that many times congenital heart diseases present late in adolescence and often the symptoms are so subtle that a child may not be aware of it.
Although of limited socioeconomic status, Indira’s parents and brother decided to fight this out. Indira was too lovely a child to simply let go. They brought the child to Bangalore again and discussed with the doctor. Indira required operation called open heart surgery. As she was already late, her body will not tolerate drastic operation in a single sitting. So, they planned to do two operations.
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What is Known Already?
Ø 8-10 children/1000 live births are born with congenital heart disease
Ø Most common heart diseases are holes in heart, blue babies, rheumatic fever etc.
Ø Malnutrition(poor weight, growth and development) is very common in them.
Why heart kids have poor nutrition?
Ø Heart disease causes fast metabolism and burns up their calories.
Ø Frequent cough, cold, pneumonia are all catabolic processes which increase the energy demand by body .
Ø During infections, baby is irritable and does not want to take food
Ø Faulty nutrition practices like delayed starting of semisolids, giving liquids and not solids, diluting milk etc
Ø Poor economic status of parents.
What should you do?
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