Objectives:To to define the frequency and patterns of congenital heart disease (CHD) among children with Down syndrome (DS) in Northwest Saudi Arabia.Methods:We included children with confirmed DS referred to the regional pediatric cardiology unit in Madinah Maternity and Children Hospital between January 2008 and December 2013. Children were identified from the unit’s data-base and the charts were reviewed retrospectively. We excluded term and preterm children with patent ducts arteriosus (PDA) and persistent foramen oval spontaneously resolved during the first 4 weeks of life.Results:A total of 302 children with DS were identified (50.3% male). Of these, 177 (58.6%) had CHD. Atrioventricular septal defect (AVSD) was the most frequent lesion identified in 72/177 (40.7%) followed by mixed left to right shunt defects (14.7%) and secundum atrial septal defect (ASD) (11.8%). Ventricular septal defect was detected in 10.7% and 8.5% had PDA beyond the neonatal period. There was no gender difference in the frequency of CHD (p=0.9) and the presence of CHD was not related to the genetic cause of DS (p=0.9).Conclusion:The frequency of CHD in our DS cohort is comparable with Europe, Asia, and other KSA regions. However its pattern appears to be different from some areas in KSA.

Background and aimsHealth-related quality of life (HRQOL) has garnered increasing interest especially for health care providers and researchers. The study aims to evaluate the HRQOL in parents of congenital heart disease (CHD) children, and to clarify the effect of the disease severity on the outcome of the HRQOL perception. Also, to analyze the internal consistency of the Arabic version of the World Health Organization (WHO) QOL-BREEF tool in order to determine whether the tool had good validity for the target population.MethodsA cross-sectional study. The HRQOL perception was evaluated using WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire, and the internal consistency of the tool was tested using Cronbach’s alpha (α-C),ResultsThe study sample consisted of 200 individuals, 120 parents of CHD children, compared to 80 parents of children with minor illnesses (mean age of participating parents = 35.1 ± 9.8 years). While evaluating the HRQOL, the group of parents of children with minor illnesses had higher scores than the total group of parents of CHD children in all domains, indicating a better HRQOL.Class-IV subgroup of parents of CHD children showed the most significant lower total score of domains between all classes (44.47 ± 12, p < 0.001). With respect to the internal consistency of the WHOQOL-BREF, estimation of α-C values were 0.84 points for the group of parents of CHD children, and 0.87 for the group of parents of children with minor illnesses.ConclusionsThis short-term study emphasized that, HRQOL scores among parents of CHD children are compromised, and the severity of their children illness significantly affect the total score of domains in their HRQOL perception. Furthermore, the tool showed to be practical and efficient to evaluate the QOL of parents of CHD children in our population in future researches.

Supraventricular tachyarrhythmia (SVT) is the most common tachyarrhythmia in pediatric patients and accounts for more than 90% of pediatric arrhythmias. As many as 16 different mechanisms of pediatric SVT exist; we focused in this review article on the three most common groups of SVT mechanisms in pediatrics: atrioventricular re-entry tachyarrhythmia (AVRT), atrioventricular nodal reentry tachyarrhythmia (AVNRT), and atrial tachyarrhythmia (AT). Many methods have been implicated in the diagnosis of SVT like full history taking regarding onset and frequency of palpitation, syncope, chest pain, dyspnea, heart failure, drug intake and physical examination. Children with suspected SVT must be subjected to resting 12-lead surface ECG and ECG during the attack. Echocardiography must be done for detection of any structural heart diseases. Moreover, recent techniques like Electrophysiologic study (EPS) is the most defi nitive diagnostic procedure. Many therapeutic strategies like drugs and radiofrequency ablation (RFA) have been succeeded to provide a signifi cant reduction of the risk of SVT, but RFA offers the prospect of cure of the arrhythmia and avoidance of drug-associated side effects. It is often becoming the fi rst line of therapy for many children with SVT, as it has a relatively low morbidity and mortality, and it results in a low rate of recurrence of SVT.