Original articleSomatic growth after ventricular septal defect in malnourished infants
Section snippets
Study Design
The study was a follow-up analysis of somatic growth characteristics of the survivors from a group of 100 consecutive infants with a single large VSD, multiple VSDs, or a double outlet right ventricle who underwent surgical closure of VSD(s) as the primary procedure at our institute between July 1998 and June 2000.
Setting
The study was conducted in the setting of a tertiary care referral hospital serving a population of 30 million people in the state of Kerala in southern India. Reference growth data
Baseline Characteristics
Four of these 94 eligible patients (4%) were lost to follow-up. There was no difference in the preoperative clinical characteristics of the patients who were lost to follow-up compared with those with follow-up data.
The baseline (at the time of surgery) characteristics of the 90 patients with follow-up data and the details of follow-up are presented in Table I. The mean duration of follow-up for all patients was 52.3 ± 15.5 months. Fifty-one (57%) patients were boys. Nine (10 %) patients had
Discussion
We found that recovery of somatic growth is suboptimal in infants with severe preoperative malnutrition following corrective surgery for VSD. For both boys and girls, weight on follow-up was significantly lower when compared with healthy children from the same geographical area, and for boys, height was also significantly lower. However, there was notable improvement from the time of surgery, particularly in weight gain.
An analysis of the factors associated with suboptimal recovery of somatic
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