Adults with congenital heart disease (CHD) can now gain vital insights into their long-term quality of life according to data from the Congenital Heart Initiative (CHI). CHI is the nation's first and largest patient-focused registry for people with CHD, and it recently launched its inaugural research, which included over 4,500 participants from all 50 states.
This study, published in JAMA Network Open, represents a big step forward in providing better information to the 1.5 million adults in the United States who were born with CHD.
"Studies like this that leverage actual patient voices and experiences help us get a better sense of how to advise, support and treat people with CHD as they age," says Anitha John, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Washington Adult Congenital Heart program at Children's National Hospital and senior author of the study. "Also, researchers get a clearer picture of the questions that need to be answered to make sure they have the best quality of life possible."
Treatments for children born with congenital heart disease have improved so significantly in the last two decades that life expectancy continues to increase as well.
"There are now more adults living with congenital heart disease than there are children with CHD," says Scott Leezer, patient co-principal investigator for the Congenital Heart Initiative registry and co-author of the study. "However, a significant gap remains in what we know about the adult CHD population. As an adult CHD patient, I was excited to contribute to creating this registry, bringing more answers to people like me who want to know how our unique hearts impact our bodies and quality of life over time."The authors note that the study's findings and the registry data currently have a few limitations. First, the registry only contains patient-reported outcomes and no clinical data. The first sub-study of the CHI, the CHI-RON study, addresses this challenge by incorporating additional data sources for a subset of consenting CHI participants.
Additionally, recall bias, underlying neurocognitive challenges and survey fatigue, may have limited participation in the CHI to a smaller subset of adults with CHD. Efforts are underway to develop methods for people with congenital heart disease who have neurodevelopmental deficits or other disabilities to engage in the registry. The CHI is temporarily closed to new registrants as the study team redesigns the study to better align with the needs of the community.
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