Growth, Development, and Quality of Life in Children with Congenital Heart Disease Children

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Despite the advances in medical and surgical care have improved the survival rates of children with congenital heart disease (CHD), they still remain risky for nutritional, cognitive problems, and quality of life. Those impacts vary according to the severity of heart lesions and still manifested years after surgery. AIM: The objective of this study was to compare growth, development, and quality of life between cyanotic and acyanotic CHD in 52 patients aged 24–69 months old from June to January 2018 in Sanglah Pediatric Cardiology clinic used WHO Anthro software, The Mullen Scales of Early Learning and PedsQL Cardiac module. RESULTS: We found significant different proportion of underweight 11.5% in acyanotic children, 42.3% in cyanotic by weight/age z-score <−2SD (p = 0.033). Height/ age z-score <−3SD 38.5% in cyanotic versus 11.5% in acyanotic (p = 0.025). The cyanotic showed a significant difference in cognitive function, presented by early learning composite score (p = 0.044) particularly in gross motor (p = 0.034) and receptive language (0.047). Quality of life differs significantly between both groups in heart problem and therapy (p = 0.042), treatment anxiety (p = 0.016), cognitive problems (p = 0.038), and communication (p = 0.022). CONCLUSION: Development, growth problems, and lower quality of life are common in cyanotic children, thus highlight the need for longitudinal surveillance.