20 February 2013

Congestive Heart Failure in Infants

On Tuesday at Luke's 2 month check up, our pediatrician discovered a heart murmur... this was a new issue discovered with Luke's heart and it got me to thinking about congestive heart failure (CHF).  It's my understanding that Luke will begin to show symptoms of CHF before he his open heart surgery will be scheduled.  I found a great resource from the American Heart Association regarding CHF and wanted to share: Heart Failure in Children and Adolescents.

We don't know yet that this particular murmur is a sign of CHF (the AHA resource doesn't indicate murmurs as a sign), so we will wait for our cardiologist to confirm or deny the idea before getting all worked up, but it's good to go into things with eyes wide open knowing what to expect.  One take away from the website above is that while Luke has had multiple echocardiograms or ultrasounds to view the structures of his heart, to my knowledge he's only had one electrocardiogram (EKG) to evaluate heart rhythm and it was performed immediately after birth when he arrived in the NICU.  I missed the test because I was still in recovery following the c-section.  I'm wondering if this murmur will create a need for him to have an EKG in the near future?

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