Kids With Heart Disease: Behavior Issues
Reported April 09, 2008
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 were 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 Childrens 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. Were trying to look at an abnormal pattern of brain development or brain functioning that we can correlate with what weve been able to measure with rating scales and by measuring the childs school performance, Dr. Shillingford explained.
SOURCE: Ivanhoe interview with Amanda J. Shillingford, M.D., Pediatrics, 2008;121:e759-e767
