MEDICAL SCIENCES
Treatment of Heart Failure in Adults with Congenital Heart Disease (ACHD) The need for international cooperation The number of adults with congenital heart disease (ACHD) is increasing and heart failure (HF) is often the reason of morbidity and mortality. Heart transplantation is still the gold standard to treat advanced HF and here an international network is needed to collect data on ACHD listed for the heart- or heart and combined organ transplantation to elucidate treatment in this patient cohort. Christoph Sinning, Department of Cardiology, University Heart and Vascular Centre Hamburg and German Centre of Cardiovascular Research (DZHK), Partner Site Hamburg/Kiel/Lübeck
D
uring the past decades and due to the improvements in cardiology and cardiac surgery, the number of adults with congenital heart disease (ACHD) has increased and so has the need to treat the consequences of palliative or corrective surgery in the youth. In fact, the number of patients with ACHD has increased by about 50 per cent compared with the number of children with congenital heart defects since the beginning of the new millennium, and prevalence of complex lesions is increasing due to a better survival in patients with moderate or complex congenital heart disease. Although ACHD may present with conditions related to general cardiovascular risk factors like coronary artery disease, by far the most common diseases leading to morbidity and mortality encountered by physicians are arrhythmia, heart failure and thromboembolic events. For arrhythmia management, current recommendations
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A SI A N H O S P I T A L & H EA LT HCA R E M A N AGE M E N T
IS S UE - 58, 2022
