With the incidence of congenital disease on the rise in Qatar, Hamad General Hospitals’ Paediatric Cardiology section has seen a total of 5,075 visits at the Outpatient Clinic in 2013, according to Hamad Medical Corporation’s Paediatric Cardiology chief Dr Reema Yousef Kamal.
The visits included some 1,355 patients on initial referral to the clinic aside providing up to 810 in-house consultations for inpatients last year, he said while speaking at the first Congenital Heart Disease Symposium hosted here recently.
The symposium was organised by HMC in collaboration with The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) Toronto, Canada.
The Paediatric Cardiology section is the primary provider of cardiovascular diagnostic and treatment services in Qatar, providing a comprehensive spectrum of services to the rapidly growing population in the country.
Congenital heart disease refers to a range of birth defects that affect the normal workings of the heart.
It is the most common birth defect, with approximately one million babies with congenital heart disease born worldwide every year.
Symptoms of the condition may include rapid heartbeat, rapid breathing, excessive sweating, extreme tiredness and fatigue, a blue tinge to the skin (cyanosis), tiredness and rapid breathing when a baby is feeding.
No obvious cause of congenital heart disease is identified in most cases, but some conditions can increase the risk for congenital heart disease, such as Down’s syndrome (a genetic disorder that affects a baby’s normal physical development and causes learning difficulties), certain infections (such as rubella) affecting the mother during pregnancy, and the mother having poorly controlled type 1 or type 2 diabetes.
Some 250 participants attended the symposium which discussed the latest advancements in the diagnosis and treatment of congenital heart disease.
Participants had the opportunity to learn from prominent experts in the field including Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub, Paediatric Cardiac surgeon, founder and director of Magdi Yacoub Research Network, Qatar Cardiovascular Research Centre and Chain of Hope Charity; and SickKids Paediatric Cardiology chief Dr Andrew Redington.
The Symposium Organising Committee chairperson and HMC Paediatric Cardiac Anesthesia senior consultant Dr Syed Abdul Aziz Syed Zin, who welcomed participants to the symposium, explained that the gathering aimed to provide an open forum to share expertise and benchmark against international standards of excellence.
“The symposium allowed us to discuss the current expertise both here and abroad in the management of congenital heart disease, a condition which is on the rise in Qatar,” Dr Syed said.
At the symposium, Prof Sir Yacoub lectured on surgery for transposition of the great arteries, a congenital heart defect where the large vessels that take blood away from the heart to the body are improperly connected, due to abnormal development of the fetal heart during the first eight weeks of pregnancy.
 “We provided an excellent overview of progress achieved in Qatar in the treatment of congenital heart conditions. The discussion also focused on future developments, with invited speakers discussing new developments in the field. This was a great initiative and I look forward to other similar meetings in the future,” he said.
Dr Redington spoke on the optimal model of care for children and adults with congenital heart disease while local HMC consultants presented on a number of topics from paediatric cardiology, paediatric cardiac surgery, paediatric cardiac anaesthesia and paediatric intensive care to highlight the current management of the patients in Qatar.