By Alexia Saoulli
ONE hundred children are born with heart-related diseases every year in Cyprus, paediatric cardiologist Dr Panayiotis Zarvos said yesterday.
According to Zarvos, one child in every 100 will be born with a heart condition. With a yearly average of 10,000 births in Cyprus, 100 infants will suffer from heart-related problems.
The doctor was unable to give an exact figure for the number of child heart patients in Cyprus, but said nearly 4,000 children, from newborns to the age of 14, visited the Makarios Hospital cardiology unit in Nicosia every year, making up about 30 per cent of Cyprus’ heart patient population.
” Some cases are more serious than others, although thankfully the mortality rate is very low in this day and age, as more and more children are operated on”said Zarvos.
Of these 4,000 heart patients, 40 need to have open-heart surgery abroad, with a 98 per cent success rate.
In Cyprus, the only child cardiovascular procedure that doctors perform is a valvotomy, which consists of opening narrow valves within an artery.
” The heart disease frequency among children in Cyprus is not alarmingly high,”the doctor said.
” It does appear to be slightly higher than expected, because Cypriots seem to be predisposed to birth related heart anomalies.
” This is probably due to the fact that we live in a small society and the hereditary factor plays a more important role than it does in larger countries abroad, particularly within rural areas”Zarvos pointed out.
Children are usually born with heart related problems rather than developing them a few years later, but symptoms may not always appear until adolescence or even adulthood and so the problem may remain undiagnosed for years.
These heart conditions are caused by a number of possible factors on top of hereditary elements, such as mothers suffering from German measles during pregnancy, maternal alcoholism, maternal diabetes, or a parental genetic disposition to high cholesterol levels.
” All these factors can directly affect the embryo and result in newborn heart conditions”he said, adding that women should be vaccinated against German measles, or treated for afflictions that might affect their unborn child while pregnant as preventive measures against childhood heart problems.
This week has been dedicated to raising awareness of children with heart conditions.Under the slogan ‘Don’t Let Hope Disappear’, the effort aims to raise money to help upgrade existing medical services and welfare conditions needed to care for these children.
The Association of Parents and Friends of Child Heart Patients is hosting a series of functions for the week, sponsored by the Ministry of Health and the Cyprus Youth Organisation.
Twenty-five lottery tickets at £1 each have been issued to all Co-operative companies, as well as to town and village authorities.
The week ends on Saturday with a sponsored run from Limassol to Agros by the ‘Pericles Demetriou’ society.
