Early adolescence is the time that patients with congenital heart disease should establish preparing for the move from pediatric to adult medical care, says a new American Heart Association scientific report. Congenital heart disease, which happen before birth, is the most general type of birth defect. Most of these heart disorders are comparatively mild and treatable. The mass of children born with a congenital heart defect survive into adulthood and live usual lives, but many need specialized and ongoing medical treatment. That's why a smooth transition from pediatric to adult medical care is so significant and needs to be a joint attempt between the doctor, the patient and the patient's family.
The transition should begin when the patient is 12 to 14 years old, according to the scientific report, released Feb. 28. "It's not as simple as receiving the name of a new doctor and going to see them when a patient turns 18," Dr. Craig Sable, co-chair of the report committee and director of echocardiography and cardiology fellowship training at George Washington University Medical School in Washington, D.C., said in an American Heart Association news release. "There are several steps associated with the transition process that require to be started at a very young age, so that by the time these children become adults the procedure is well under way," Craig explained.
The risk of young people being admitted to hospital with alcohol associated liver disease has risen more than tenfold over five years. Researchers say the figures show anti drinking campaign are failing to reach teenagers. The most worrying enlarge in alcoholic cirrhosis, or late stage alcoholic liver disease, occur in those aged 20 to 29, who would have begun drinking in their untimely teens. The study by the Curtin University National Drug Research Institute also found an enlarged risk of young people developing alcoholic hepatitis, or young stage alcoholic liver disease.
While deaths due to alcoholic liver disease were falling overall, Associate Professor Tanya Chikritzhs of the organization said this was probable to have been due to advances in disease management. ''A lot of people see the number of deaths reduce and think that means things are improving. But just because there has been an development in treatment, that does not mean the occurrence is also going down.'' Professor Chikritzhs said better screening techniques for liver disease did not clarify such a marked enlarge, and that her research showed what several doctors and nurses had been suspect but until now did not have the research to support.
''Although people might be drinking the same volume of alcohol, there has been an enlarge in the consumption of products such as wine which have a higher alcohol content, with beer have an average of 4 per cent and red wine an average of 14 per cent.'' She distinct a heavy drinker as someone who drank more than 40 grams of alcohol per day, or four ordinary drinks, but said a like result could result from binge drinking two or three times per week. The chairman of the National Alliance for Action on Alcohol, Professor Mike Daube, said because alcoholic cirrhosis take years of heavy drinking to expand, people with the disease in their 20s were probable to have begun heavy drinking as young as 15.
Alternative remedy can have dangerous, and maybe fatal, side effects, particularly for vulnerable groups like children, Australian health expert say. Researchers say parents occasionally think alternative treatments are "more natural" with less side effects than conservative drugs, but children given option remedies can have unfavorable reactions, a study print in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood said.
In almost two thirds of 39 cases in a study of incidents connecting children and exchange remedies by the Australian Pediatric Surveillance Unit between 2001 and 2003, the side belongings were rated as severe, life threatening or fatal. The incident concerned children ranging from babies to 16-year-olds. In 30 cases, the problem were "probably or definitely" related to matching medicine, and in 17 cases the patients were measured to have been harmed by a failure to administer conservative medicines, the study said.
"Many of the adverse actions associated with failure to use conventional medicine resulted from the family's belief in matching and alternative medicine and determination to use it although medical advice," the study author from the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne said. "Children don't take decisions themselves about their treatment; very often it is their parents, and parents can be mistaken by the 50 million option medicine websites," says Edzard Ernst, Professor of balancing Medicine at Exeter University in the United Kingdom.
