View clinical trials related to Heart Defects, Congenital.
Filter by:The purpose of this research study is to learn about parents' experiences following diagnosis of a fetal/neonatal Congenital Heart Defect (CHD). Nurses, physicians, and other health-care clinicians will benefit from an improved understanding of what the diagnosis means to parents and what they expect concerning the infant, being a parent, and caregiving tasks and responsibilities. The investigators expect that the knowledge gained will increase clinicians' ability to respond to parents' needs.
Normal cardiac and respiratory functions should be maintained during pediatric cardiac catheterization. Propofol has become a popular choice for sedation in children, however, it depresses cardiac and respiratory functions. Some investigators reported that ketamine attenuates its depressant effect, but it remains unclear whether ketamine reduces cardiac and respiratory depression caused by propofol in pediatric cardiac catheterization.
During cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) after heart surgery, a child's blood is exposed to many foreign entities. These conditions trigger the body's inflammatory response which results in leaky capillaries, increased swelling and possibly organ dysfunction. Since the early 1990's, modified ultrafiltration (MUF) has been shown to decrease excess swelling, reduce bleeding, improve heart function, and decrease hospital length of stay. Angiopoietins are a family of proteins necessary for both normal and abnormal blood vessel formation. They also appear to play a role in capillary leak. Though MUF has been shown to improve clinical outcome following CPB, there continues to be conflicting reports whether this is a result of the filtration of inflammatory proteins or simply from excess fluid removal. Since angiopoietins appear to play a role in both inflammation and capillary leak, the investigators hypothesize that the benefit seen after MUF is also secondary to its ability to filter out these proteins, especially angiopoietin-2.
In neonates and infants </= 10 kg following cardiac surgery for congenital heart disease a more restrictive red blood cell (RBC) transfusion strategy will be as effective as, and possibly superior to, a liberal RBC strategy. Allowing lower hemoglobin concentration will not affect the cardiac or pulmonary status of the patient.
The investigators previously investigated the cardioprotective effect of an adenosine-lidocaine cardioplegia with moderate-potassium (K+, 10.0 mmol/L) in pediatric cardiac surgery, which was associated with better myocardial protective effects when compared with conventional high-potassium cardioplegia. However, this cardioplegia could not be sucked back into the cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) circuit because of excessive hemodilution and severe systemic hypotension induced by adenosine. Therefore, the investigators supposed that a moderate-potassium (K+, 10.0 mmol/L) blood cardioplegia without adenosine could also arrest the heart and have better myocardial protective effects compared with conventional hyperkalamic cold blood cardioplegia during cardiac operations without excessive hemodilution and systemic hypotension.
Postnatal intestinal function in cardiac infants. The overall goal of this proposal is to address a widespread health problem in the pediatric cardiac infant population - poor postnatal growth - through a collaborative effort between pediatric cardiology, cardiothoracic surgery, neonatology, microbiology, and immunology. The hypothesis is that term neonates with complex congenital heart disease (CHD) who receive trophic breastmilk feeds in the pre-operative period will show improved gut function than neonates who were strictly NPO (nothing by mouth) in the pre-operative period.
Exercise intolerance is a major burden for patients with complex congenital heart disease (CHD), significantly affecting their quality of life. Cardiopulmonary exercise testing provides a reliable tool both for assessing exercise capacity of CHD patients and for risk stratification and is becoming part of the routine clinical assessment of these patients. Exercise has an effect on the muscular, metabolic and circulatory systems. While exercise training has been widely studied in chronic heart failure, its efficacy in adults with CHD remain unknown. The investigators hypothesize that structured exercise training will improve exercise intolerance, in particular peak VO2. The aim of this multicenter, randomized study is to evaluate the impact of structured exercise training on exercise intolerance in patients with complex CHD.
The investigators planned to study the etiopathogenic factors of conotruncal cardiac defects regarding the relations between the metabolic, the genetic and the environmental factors which lead to these cardiopathy.
During repair of a congenital heart defect the child is exposed to myocardial hypoxia. Recent studies have suggested that the paediatric myocardium is more sensitive to hypoxia and cardioplegic arrest than the adult. The protective effect of halogenated agents on ischaemia and reperfusion injury has been investigated widely in adults. The investigators hypothesis that sevoflurane applied during cardiopulmonary bypass might afford better myocardial protection during paediatric cardiac surgery.
Newborn babies with congenital heart disease often require surgery in the first month of life. The risks of brain damage from congenital heart disease and from the various corrective surgeries are high because of poor levels of oxygen reaching the brain. Topiramate is an anti-convulsant medication that protects brain cells from damage due to low amounts of oxygen in animal studies. The investigators hypothesize that giving topiramate to babies with congenital heart disease before and after surgery will decrease the amount of brain damage caused by the heart disease and/or the surgery to correct the heart disease.