ORLANDO, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Each year in the United States, more
than 10,000 newborns have congenital heart disease (CHD) severe enough to
require surgery before they are one year old. Now, a new study says as these
newborns grow into school-aged children, they are at a significant risk for
attention and behavior problems.
Researchers studied 109 children, ages five to 10, who had cardiac surgery for
congenital heart disease as newborns. Nearly half of the group -- 53 children --
were receiving remedial services at school and 15 percent were in special
education classrooms.
According to questionnaires completed by parents and teachers, while most of the
children with CHD scored in the normal range, the group was three to four times
more likely than the general population to have a high-risk score for
inattention and hyperactivity.
The reason children with this condition are scoring more poorly than others
remains unknown. “I think we still have a lot more to learn about why we’re
seeing these patterns of behavior abnormalities and school problems in kids with
congenital heart disease,” Amanda J. Shillingford, M.D., lead researcher and a
pediatric cardiologist at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told Ivanhoe.
The team is currently working on a follow-up study to compare normal-scoring
children to abnormal-scoring children receiving remedial school services. “We’re
trying to look at an abnormal pattern of brain development or brain functioning
that we can correlate with what we’ve been able to measure with rating scales
and by measuring the child’s school performance,” Dr. Shillingford explained.
SOURCE: Ivanhoe interview with Amanda J. Shillingford, M.D., Pediatrics,
2008;121:e759-e767
