PMID: 2093430Oct 1, 1990Paper

Clinical aspects of dilated cardiomyopathy in pediatric age

Cardiologia : bollettino della Società italiana di cardiologia
P CasoR Calabrò

Abstract

Natural history and prognostic factors of dilated cardiomyopathy in pediatric age are not well identified so far. The course of the disease, often, presents "odd" characteristics: some of the patients show clinical improvement, someone remains unchanged and some of them have a negative evolution in a very short time. It is necessary to identify the group of patients having a poor outcome in order to define prognostic factors of impending death so that a cardiac transplant could be offered to them as a reasonable therapeutic choice. Twenty-two children, 9 males and 13 females (median age 5 +/- 5 years) with dilated cardiomyopathy were studied. Their natural history was followed for a period of 40 +/- 30 months. Clinical data, laboratory studies (electrocardiogram, Holter monitoring, echocardiogram M-mode, 2-D, Doppler and chest X-ray) were taken into consideration. At the end of follow-up period 7 patients showed improvement in cardiac status (31.8%), 7 remained unchanged (31.8%) and 8 (36%) got worse; 9 died. The survival curve showed a rate of 72% at 12 months and of 59.3% at 60 months. Of 9 died patients, 2 died suddenly and seven for congestive heart failure. Clinical findings and laboratory investigations of 13 survived pat...Continue Reading

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