Children born with congenital heart diseases can lead a normal life or at least the quality of their lives can improve significantly if they undergo surgeries at a proper time, doctors of a private hospital said on Thursday.
The doctors warned that there were some conditions that turns inoperable if the crucial period to perform surgery is missed.
“There are some children who can live a normal life and a very long life with only one surgery. But in complex cases a child may require multiple surgeries over a period of time. But that will improve the quality of his life and life expectancy as well,” said Subhendu Mandal, a paediatric cardiologist with the BM Birla Heart Research Centre.
The hospital had brought together several children on Thursday who were born with congenital heart diseases and were leading normal lives after undergoing surgeries.
One of those children was diagnosed with a problem in his heart only after two days of his birth.
“My son was diagnosed with a heart defect when he just two-days-old. He underwent a surgery after 21 days. The doctors here had told me that he would be fine after the surgery. He is now completely fit and is very active,” said the boy’s father.
Mandal said that some of the congenital problems included reversed heart, reversed vessels and a hole in the heart. In children born with reversed vessels, the impure blood that is supposed to be sent to the lungs for treatment from the right chamber of the heart instead goes to the rest of the body. “The left chamber sends the pure blood to the rest of the body while the left chamber sends the impure blood to the lungs. In reversed vessels cases, this normal function is disrupted. As a result the baby turns blue as there is oxygen deficiency in them,” said Mandal.
A surgery can cure it, he added.