How to recognize that a child has hole in the heart?
By Justin
Interestingly such babies often have Tell- tale signs which a conscious parent can easily pick up.
STEP I: How to suspect that a child has heart disease?
Frequent cough, cold and pneumonia
Poor weight gain as compared to peers
Bluish discolouration of lips and nails (Cyanosis)
Gets tired easily
Fast breathing or difficulty in breathing with flaring of nose, chest retractions
Difficulty in feeding: unable to feed at a single attempt (suck-rest-suck cycle)
Excessive sweating of forehead
Delayed development (delay in sitting, standing, walking etc)
Unexplained unconsciousness, chest pain and palpitations
The pregnancy and delivery history is also important. If the mother catches infections like rubella in first three months of pregnancy or is addicted to alcohol, cigarette or is taking medicines for epilepsy (convulsions), diabetes, thyroid disorders, their offsprings have an increased risk.
Family history is also crucial. Marriage between blood relations (consanguineous marriage), other family members having heart disease etc are high risk factors.
STEP II: Now what to do?
Visit your child specialist. The pediatrician hears your child’s chest with a stethoscope and can diagnose abnormal sounds called murmurs. He will also check the Blood pressure, pulses and measure the oxygen percentage in your child with an instrument called Pulse Oximeter. Sometimes he asks for an ECG (Electrocardiogram) or Xray of chest.
If any of these are abnormal, he will refer your child to a pediatric cardiologist. A pediatric cardiologist is a cardiologist exclusively treating children with heart defects.
Depending upon the problem, the pediatric cardiologist usually advises an Echocardiogram, ECG, and Chest X-ray and then decides.
Echocardiogram: The most effective diagnostic test is an Echocardiogram. Echo is an ultrasound of heart where ultrasound waves are applied on the heart by a transducer and the reflected waves from heart and blood vessels are recaptured and reconstructed by the computer to form a structural image of the heart. It tells us about the heart chambers, holes in heart, valve problems, heart function, and fluid around heart.
Continue to What to do if your child has a hole in the heart?
Article by: Dr Maitri Chaudhuri MD(Pediatrics), Fellow National Board(Pediatric Cardiology) Consultant Pediatric Cardiologist Vikram Hospitals, Bangalore