Growth Pattern of Children with Congenital Heart Disease Before and After Open Heart Surgery

Ahmad Jamei Khosroshahi¹Maryam Shoaran²Shamsi Ghaffari¹Ehsan Shabanpour²Parmida Seraj Ebrahimi³Akram Ansari⁴Reza Khosravi⁵Shahram Sadeghvand^2*Gisou Erabi^6*

• ¹Pediatric cardiology Department, Pediatric Health Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran
• ²Pediatric Health Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran
• ³Student research committee, KTO Karatay University, Faculty of Medicine, Konya, Türkiye
• ⁴Medical Student, Shantou University medical college, Shantou, Guangdong, China
• ⁵Student Research Committee, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
• ⁶Student Research Committee, Urmia University of Medical Sciences, Urmia, Iran

Background: Congenital heart disease (CHD) affects 0.8% to 1.2% of newborns globally, posing challenges to growth and nutrition. This cross-sectional study, conducted at Shahid Madani Hospital, Tabriz, aimed to assess growth patterns in 200 CHD patients (cyanotic and non-cyanotic) aged one month to 15 years before and after open-heart surgery.Methods: Data were collected from March 2016 to March 2020, including patient records, growth measurements, surgical details, and postoperative outcomes. Patients were categorized into cyanotic and non-cyanotic groups. Inclusion criteria involved CHD patients undergoing surgery with one to two years of follow-up. To compare growth disorders between cyanotic and noncyanotic groups, logistic regression was used, adjusting for age and gender. The significance level was set at 0.05 for statistical analysis.Results: A total of 200 patients suffered from CHD underwent growth disorder examination in before and after surgery. The prevalence of weight growth disorder reduced from 44% in preoperative to 3.5% in 2 years after surgery. Similarly, the height and head circumference growth disorders experienced reduction from 40.5% and 6.5% to 9.5% and 1.5%, respectively. Generally, growth disorders were higher in cyanotic compared to non-cyanotic group. However, this difference was only significant in weight and height growth disorders in cyanotic vs. non-cyanotic groups after one year from surgery (P= 0.024, 0.038). The duration of PICU (8.11±5.47 vs. 8.84±5.83 days) and ward (4.40±3.46 vs. 3.57±2.20 days) hospitalization was longer for noncyanotic vs. cyanotic groups, both suffering from growth disorders.: Despite advancements in pediatric cardiac surgery, CHD children face growth challenges, especially in the cyanotic group. Timely surgical intervention demonstrated improvements, but growth disorders persisted in the long term, impacting PICU and inpatient ward stays. Targeted interventions are crucial to mitigate mortality risks associated with growth impairments in CHD children.