Congenital Heart Disease: Early Diagnosis to Decrease Infant Mortality

Nova Southeastern University, Davie, Florida, USA

Although congenital heart diseases (CHD) can be first diagnosed during pregnancy with a fetal echocardiogram, it is more commonly diagnosed after birth. Many health care facilities have implemented different testing methods that allow the diagnosis of this condition within 24 hours of birth, thus increasing the chances of survival in newborns. As one of the objectives of Healthy People 2020, reducing the rate of infant deaths related to congenital heart defects has had an improvement of ten percent since the year of 2006 (Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Healthy People 2020 [ODPHPHP], 2017). To maintain and perhaps increase this percentage, health care providers must be aware of the importance of early testing and recognition of signs and symptoms in newborns with CHD before being discharged from the hospital. After reviewing three different articles related to the diagnosis of CHD, we concluded that some of the most important diagnostic exams that can be done to detect this disease in a newborn are the pulse oximetry, a physical exam that highlights signs of hypoxemia, and an echocardiogram. These tests will confirm the diagnosis, and establish the type of CHD the infant presents with in order to treat him/her as soon as possible (Children’s National Medical Center [CNMC], n.d.).