Some heart defects have been proven to have a genetic background, others are caused by viral infection of the mother and fetus, alcoholism of the pregnant woman or the use of certain medications by the pregnant woman.
Congenital heart disease occurs with a frequency of 1 in 140 births, and is often accompanied by other malformations.
In the fetal period, the baby’s heart has certain structural features that enable intrauterine life – it is a hole in the septum between the atria of the heart and the connection between the aorta and the pulmonary artery (the so-called Botalla duct). In the vast majority of newborns, these connections are closed after birth; failure to close these connections causes heart defects. On the other hand, the above-mentioned factors of proven teratogenic (defective) importance cause other abnormalities of the heart structure.
The most common congenital heart defect is an opening in the interventricular septum, and the most severe is the left heart underdevelopment syndrome and the translation of great arterial trunks. Congenital heart defects are divided into cyanotic and non-cyanotic.
What symptoms in a newborn with a heart defect should worry parents? It is cyanosis, especially of the mucous membranes and skin, rapid, sometimes grunting breath, pale skin with a gray tinge around the mouth and nose, fast or slow heart rate, fatigue of the baby during feeding, sometimes causing food cessation or reluctance to eat, sweating with little effort , lack of weight gain, irritability, sleep disturbance.
The doctor examining the newborn finds a heart murmur, in some defects lack of a pulse in the femoral arteries, changes in blood pressure, enlargement of the liver and spleen, and other features of circulatory failure.
Each newborn with a suspected or confirmed heart defect is referred from the neonatal unit for urgent or scheduled clinical cardiology consultation, depending on the disease symptoms present. Treatment of heart defects usually requires surgery, often in one stage, and in the case of complicated heart defects, in multiple stages.