Video-assisted thoracoscopic versus open surgery for persistent ductus arteriosus.

Background/purpose: The aim of this study is to compare the experience with video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) for patent ductus arteriosus (PDA) since 1995 with the results of conventional open surgery from the preceding 10 years.

Methods: The records of 60 children who underwent standard posterolateral muscle splitting thoracotomy and ligation of PDA in 1986-1995 were reviewed for the study. The data on 50 children who underwent VATS PDA ligation since 1995 were collected prospectively.

Diastolic dysfunction without left ventricular hypertrophy is an early finding in children with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy-causing mutations in the beta-myosin heavy chain, alpha-tropomyosin, and myosin-binding protein C genes.

Objectives: We investigated the presence of left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) and features of diastolic dysfunction in genotype-confirmed children from families with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) and healthy control children.

Background: In subjects with HCM-causing mutations, LVH usually does not evolve until adolescence. Diastolic dysfunction has not been systematically evaluated in children carrying HCM-causing mutations.

Long-term results of pediatric cardiac surgery in Finland: education, employment, marital status, and parenthood.

Objective: This population-based study was designed to examine the psychosocial outcome of Finnish patients who had been operated on for congenital heart disease during childhood.

Methods: A questionnaire was mailed to 3789 adult patients who had been operated on for congenital heart defects in Finland. Of these, 2896 (76%) answered the questionnaire.

Normal aortic dimensions and flow in 168 children and young adults.

Background: Knowledge of normal aortic dimensions is important while evaluating children with aortic root dilatation.

Objective: The purpose of the study was to create normal values for aortic dimensions with two-dimensional echocardiography and for aortic flow velocities with Doppler echocardiography in healthy children and young adults.

Design And Patients: One hundred and sixty-eight healthy children were studied by a single observer using digitized two-dimensional (2DE) and Doppler echocardiography.

Long-term prospective follow-up study of cardiac function after cardiotoxic therapy for malignancy in children.

Purpose: To evaluate cardiac function by means of conventional and three-dimensional echocardiography (3DE) and measurement of natriuretic peptides in children and adolescents previously treated for childhood malignancy using individual follow-up data and matched control children as reference criteria.

Patients And Methods: Thirty-nine survivors of childhood malignancy were examined in 1994 and 1998. The mean time from the diagnosis was 8.

Ambulatory blood pressure in 12-year-old children born small for gestational age.

An association between low birth weight and subsequent elevated blood pressure has been demonstrated in a large number of studies, but the number of subjects born small for gestational age in these studies has been negligible. The inverse relationship between birth weight and blood pressure in children has been evaluated previously with an ambulatory blood pressure device, but only in children with normal birth weights. In this prospective case-control study from birth to the age of 12, we evaluated the ambulatory blood pressures in 50 children born at term but small for gestational age and in 50 full-term children born appropriate for gestational age.