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Care for Adults With Heart Defects Lacking in Europe
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THURSDAY, April 27 (HealthDay News) -- European adults living with congenital heart disease receive inadequate care, and there are too few specialist centers to support the growing number of these patients, a new study finds. Researchers analyzed data collected from 71 centers that took part in the Euro Heart Survey on Adult Congenital Heart Disease. "Society has invested a lot towards increasing the life expectancy of these children, but seems less interested when they are grown up," study lead author Dr. Philip Moons, assistant professor at the Centre for Health Services and Nursing Research of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, said in a prepared statement. "Because we did not receive information for all centers in every country, we cannot draw conclusions about whether any individual country is better or worse than any other or whether a particular country has a sufficient number of centers," Moons said. "Nor can we know to what extent this affects the outcome of treatment for patients. However, we can definitely say that the provision of care overall is suboptimal, and there is much room for improvement," he said. "Certainly, our findings suggest that the number of adequately equipped centers is too limited to support the more than 1.2 million adults with congenital heart diseases in Europe." While individual healthcare workers do their best to provide quality care for adults with congenital heart disease patients, their efforts are often frustrated by problems within healthcare systems, the study said. The study was published online Wednesday in the European Heart Journal. More information The March of Dimes has more about congenital heart defects.
Last Updated: April 27, 2006 |