The Incidence of Isolated Ventricular Septal Defect in Libyan Newborns

• Mohamed Thabet Ali

  Department of Pediatrics, Faculty of Medicine Omar Al-Mukhtar University, Al-Bayda – Libya

  Author

• Faiza Mohamed Ali

  Department of Pediatrics, Faculty of Medicine Omar Al-Mukhtar University, Al-Bayda – Libya

  Author

This study aimed to evaluate the incidence and spontaneous closure of ventricular septal defects in a randomly selected newborn population, using color Doppler echocardiographic screening. Color flow Doppler echocardiographic screening was performed in 635 neonates within the first week of life. Patients with a ventricular septal defect were also followed up for 6 months to detect spontaneous closure rate and its timing. The incidences of a ventricular septal defect in all neonates, preterm neonates, and term neonates were found as 48.8/1,000, 64/1,000, and 48.1/1,000 live births, respectively. Only three patients were symptomatic. 21 cases had a muscular ventricular septal defect and 10 cases had a perimembranous ventricular septal defect. Most of them had a small ventricular septal defect (≤3 mm). Spontaneous closure was observed in 64.5% of ventricular septal defects within 6 months Closure rate was found as 80% for preterm infants and 66.8% for term infants (p>0.05). The incidence of a ventricular septal defect was considerably high in neonates when routine color flow Doppler echocardiographic examination was performed. Despite the increased incidence of ventricular septal defect, spontaneous closure rate was remarkably high within the first 6 months of life. These defects may result from delayed physiologic development and have a good prognosis.

Clark, E. B. (2001). Etiology of congenital cardiovascular malformations: epidemiology and genetics. Moss and Adams’ Heart Disease in Infants and Adolescents, 1, 64-79.

Du, Z.-D., Roguin, N., Barak, M., Bihari, S. G., & Ben-Elisha, M. (1996). High prevalence of muscular ventricular septal defect in preterm neonates. The American journal of cardiology, 78(10), 1183-1185.

Du, Z.-D., Roguin, N., & Wu, X.-J. (1998). Spontaneous closure of muscular ventricular septal defect identified by echocardiography in neonates. Cardiology in the young, 8(4), 500-505.

Hiraishi, S., Agata, Y., Nowatari, M., Oguchi, K., Misawa, H., Hirota, H., Fujino, N., Horiguchi, Y., Yashiro, K., & Nakae, S. (1992). Incidence and natural course of trabecular ventricular septal defect: two-dimensional echocardiography and color Doppler flow imaging study. The Journal of pediatrics, 120(3), 409-415.

Hoffman, J. I., & Kaplan, S. (2002). The incidence of congenital heart disease. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 39(12), 1890-1900.

Miyake, T., Shinohara, T., Nakamura, Y., Fukuda, T., Tasato, H., Toyohara, K., & Tanihira, Y. (2004). Spontaneous closure of ventricular septal defects followed up from< 3 months of age. Pediatrics international, 46(2), 135-140.

Park, M. (2014). Park’s pediatric cardiology for practitioners, ser. Pediatrics. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier Saunders.

Roguin, N., Du, Z.-D., Barak, M., Nasser, N., Hershkowitz, S., & Milgram, E. (1995). High prevalence of muscular ventricular septal defect in neonates. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 26(6), 1545-1548.

Sands, A., Casey, F., Craig, B., Dornan, J., Rogers, J., & Mulholland, H. (1999). Incidence and risk factors for ventricular septal defect in “low risk” neonates. Archives of Disease in Childhood-Fetal and Neonatal Edition, 81(1), F61-F63.

Snider, A., Serwer, G., & Ritter, S. (1997). Echocardiography in Pediatric Heart Disease, Mosby-Year Book. Inc., St. Louis, Missouri, 29.

• PDF

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Copyright of the articles Published by Almukhtar Journal of Science (MJSc) is retained by the author(s), who grant MJSc a license to publish the article. Authors also grant any third party the right to use the article freely as long as its integrity is maintained and its original authors and cite MJSc as the original publisher. Also, they accept the article remains published by the MJSc website (except in the occasion of a retraction of the article).