Heart disease study: Care for adults in Europe born with congenital heart disease needs to be improved because there are not enough specialists and an increasing number of patients, according to a new study.
The Euro Heart Survey on Adult Congenital Heart Disease, conducted by researchers from Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland, analysed care for congenital heart disease sufferers from data provided by 71 centres.
"There is much room for improvement," said Dr Philip Moons of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium.
Congenital heart disease refers to abnormalities in the heart that are present at birth. It is responsible for more deaths in the first year of life than any other birth defect. Some of the problems can be treated with medication while others require surgery. Improved treatment means that many children born with heart problems now survive into adulthood.
"Our findings suggest that the number of adequately equipped centres is too limited to support the more than 1.2 million adults with congenital heart disease in Europe," Dr Moons said.
Dr Moons and his team said they could not draw conclusions about care in individual nations. But according to the survey, published in European Heart Journal, many specialist centres did not perform the recommended minimum number of congenital heart operations a year and did not have specialist nurses on staff.
The researchers said a referral centre should have at least one, and preferably two, cardiologists trained in adult congenital heart disease.