Baby Health Problems

According to a study published two months ago in the New England Journal of Medicine, brain development for babies with heart disease is affected. This delay is equal to that of brain function apparent in premature infants.

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There are studies suggesting that babies who have had heart surgeries suffer from mental delays. In recent years there have been debates whether the real cause is due to heart surgery or simply associated factors.

With the new study published in the New England Journal for Medicine proved that these abnormalities were present even before the surgery.

A Pediatric Cardiologist from University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Vidu Garg, said that kids with brain delay have been hypothesized to also have heart abnormality.

The US National Institute for Health reported that congenital heart defects rank as the number one killer among newborns. It is way higher than other recognized birth defects. About 35,000 American babies suffer from congenital heart defect annually. This is according to the study done by American Heart Association.

The recent study on birth defects consisted of medical teams from various schools: University of California and University of British Columbia. The teams analyzed the medical condition of 41 infants with congenital heart disease. Twenty nine of the babies underwent transposition of arteries and 12 babies were in for single-ventricle physiology. Magnetic Resonance Imaging is the researchers’ primary mode of examining brain development among these infants. A view of the white matter tracts and the diffusivity was also taken for all of the babies.

White matter activity and its state is a special interest for the researchers since the entire nervous system uses this to communicate. The team discovered that although normal babies and those with congenital heart defects both have the same number of white matter, the babies with congenital heart defects have more immature white matter which is highly prone to injury and sensitive to reduced level of blood oxygen. Among the 41 babies, 13 of them have decreased white matter activity due to immaturity.

The teams also fund out that diffusivity in infants with heart disease is increased by 4 percent. Diffusivity here measures brain tissue structure. This is important in the study since diffusivity is expected to decrease and not increase as one grows old. As brain develops, water passing through tissues is blocked by these developing tissues so diffusion is not that great as the start of life.

With these findings, doctors were able to pinpoint white matter injury as one of the factors which affects brain development among infants. But these white matter cells, according to Dr. Steven Miller, have the ability to recover and repair itself through remyelination. All is not really lost for babies with heart disease. It is comforting to know that babies with immature brains have great potential to actually heal and recover.