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Abstract
Congenital heart defect is the most common and the major cause of mortality and morbidity in the infant and children, a child with congenital heart defects has an economical and social tragedy for both the parents and the community, some types may be lethal to the newborn shortly after birth, or even intrauterine. Others may be tolerated for varying periods of time, but leaving an inverse impact on child’s health status, and might end in early death. True incidence of congenital heart defects from large series lies between 7-9/1000 live births, and this rises further to 10/1000 live births if still births are included, (Hamed, 1998; Susan, et al., 2002). In USA there are about 25,000 to 40,000 children are born with a heart defect each year,(CDC report, 1999; AHA, 2006).
In Egypt the average prevalence for congenital heart defect is (8/1000 live births), also there is 2.5 million live births a year, this will mean, that every year there will be 20,000 more children with congenital heart defects, (Egypt heart net, 2007). A few data are available in Egypt, because no intensive population studies have been done, some studies reported that an incidence of 1.58% among all congenital anomalies in newborns at Ain Shams University in 1970, and 2.3% at Mansoura in 1985, a study in Alexandria University in 1988 stated that Congenital heart defects account for 25.6% of all congenital defects in children, (Sameh, et al., 2007).
Treatment of congenital heart defects vary widely according to the type of defect, they may include drugs, surgery, and lifestyle modifications such as increasing exercise and diet changes. There is a trend to include patients and often family members in treatment planning. Lifestyle adjustments are perhaps one of the most important factors in living with heart defects, the important thing is to examine carefully what is important to making as full a recovery as possible, and then following through instituting the necessary changes, losing excess weight, altering eating habits to lower cholesterol and increasing physical activity are examples of other positive lifestyle. All of these require only common sense and determination, others such as exercise conditioning and dietary changes, may require professional guidance, (CPMCnet, 2007).