Narayana Health City, one of India’s most preferred centre for referral and treatment of children born with congenital heart defects today launched a nation-wide awareness campaign to observe ‘Congenital Heart Disease Awareness Week’ from February 14-20, 2017. This is aimed at not only creating awareness among the general populace but also among the referring physicians.

Most of the congenital heart defects can be detected within 6 months after birth. Usually there is a collaboration of symptoms for children with heart disease such as the child is not feeding well, has frequent breathlessness on little exertion or has a trace of blue skin and not gaining weight. A combination of such symptoms shows up from birth up to the age of 6 months when most of the congenital heart defects can be detected.

“It is the need of the hour to create awareness on early detection for congenital heart defects, which can save many children and help them grow as normal individuals”, said Dr. Devi Shetty, Sr. Cardiac Surgeon and Chairman of Narayana Health City.

“The population is not very small; even 1 per cent is a significant number. The most important message to them is that treatment is available and almost all of them can be corrected if detected early”, he said.

Around 8 to 10 children per 1,000 are born with congenital heart disease in India. The incidence comes to around 1 to 2 per cent of children born with congenital heart disease in our country. “If parent or a sibling has a congenital heart disease, then your risk increases marginally by 2 to 4 per cent.

Our facility alone has treated around 3,500 children for CHD defects annually, informed Dr. Sreesha Maiya, Sr. Consultant Paediatric Cardiologist, Narayana Health City.

Around 70 per cent of cases are treated with open heart surgery and the remaining through cardiac catheter intervention. The most common problem in congenital heart defect is the ‘hole in the heart’, said Dr. Maiya.

NH Health City is located in Bommasandra, Bengaluru, comprises of Narayana Institute of Cardiac Sciences (NICS), a super specialty hospital for cardiology and cardiac surgery, and Mazumdar Shaw Medical Center (MSMC), a multispecialty hospital for cancer care, neurology and neurosurgery, nephrology, urology, has one of India's largest bone marrow transplant units which performed over 600 bone marrow transplants till now. NH Health City operates a stem cell bank.