Today Valentine is celebrated, but also the International Day of Congenital Heart Disease, an auspicious date to remember this congenital defect with the highest incidence in Spain, which affects an average of eight out of every thousand babies born. This means 4,000 new cases every year, to which the more than 120,000 young people and adults who live chronically with this pathology in our country.
Congenital heart diseases are those heart diseases that are present from birth and correspond to a developmental disorder of this organ, produced especially in the first three months of pregnancy, or to injuries in the uterus of the heart already formed.
Heart diseases are malformations of the heart or large blood vessels present in the fetus or in the newborn. Some congenital heart diseases manifest clinically at later ages (months or years later). Children are born with a heart that is missing some part or has an incomplete part, or it has holes in the partitions between their chambers, or they are narrow or their valves are leaking, or the blood vessels are narrow.
exist more than 50 different types of heart malformationsSometimes the same patient can combine more than one. Some may present a slight risk, which only require periodic check-ups, while others require interventions such as catheterization or surgery and some more serious ones that require immediate surgery or successive interventions accompanied by long hospitalizations until adulthood.
The causes of congenital heart disease are unknown so far, although there are related risk factors such as severe illness or drug intake during pregnancy, family history, chromosomal alterations of the child or the age of the parents.
However, there are some things that pregnant or planning to be pregnant women can do to prevent birth defects of their baby or reduce their chances of appearance, mainly by carrying a healthy pregnancy, healthy eating, taking folic acid, avoiding the use of drugs and alcohol, and certain dangers to reduce, as far as possible, the risk of congenital heart disease.
