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Pediatric Cardiac Service Development in Croatia

This article describes the establishment of a pediatric cardiac service program in a limited resource country. According to national epidemiological studies about 330 children with congenital heart disease (CHD) are born every year in Croatia. As a part of the former Yugoslavia, there was not an org...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Malčić, Ivan, Anić, Darko
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8907509/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35282346
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fcvm.2022.793166
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author Malčić, Ivan
Anić, Darko
author_facet Malčić, Ivan
Anić, Darko
author_sort Malčić, Ivan
collection PubMed
description This article describes the establishment of a pediatric cardiac service program in a limited resource country. According to national epidemiological studies about 330 children with congenital heart disease (CHD) are born every year in Croatia. As a part of the former Yugoslavia, there was not an organized strategy for the pediatric cardiac service. After Croatian independence in 1991, even during the war, a need for such service led to the first step in the development of organized care for patients with CHD, a humanitarian mission provided by a non-governmental organization (NGO), from the United States. In the ten-year period (1993–2003), 601 children were operated on during this program. After the end of this program, the Croatian team was not able to cover the whole spectrum of pediatric cardiac care independently. About 60% of the children were sent abroad, and only about 40% of the operations were performed in Croatia. Over the time, the surgical team improved and after a specialized congenital heart surgeon joined, the number and quality of the program in the country raised, and the number of referrals to foreign centers gradually declined. In the meantime, a cardiological interventional program also improved. Today majority of standard congenital heart surgery procedures can be performed in Croatia. Last year our congenital heart team operated on 180 patients with low mortality and the interventional team (pediatric and adult) performed 66 procedures. In the article, we present positive shifts achieved during time as well as weaknesses and reasons for problems in establishing a high-quality CHD center.
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spelling pubmed-89075092022-03-11 Pediatric Cardiac Service Development in Croatia Malčić, Ivan Anić, Darko Front Cardiovasc Med Cardiovascular Medicine This article describes the establishment of a pediatric cardiac service program in a limited resource country. According to national epidemiological studies about 330 children with congenital heart disease (CHD) are born every year in Croatia. As a part of the former Yugoslavia, there was not an organized strategy for the pediatric cardiac service. After Croatian independence in 1991, even during the war, a need for such service led to the first step in the development of organized care for patients with CHD, a humanitarian mission provided by a non-governmental organization (NGO), from the United States. In the ten-year period (1993–2003), 601 children were operated on during this program. After the end of this program, the Croatian team was not able to cover the whole spectrum of pediatric cardiac care independently. About 60% of the children were sent abroad, and only about 40% of the operations were performed in Croatia. Over the time, the surgical team improved and after a specialized congenital heart surgeon joined, the number and quality of the program in the country raised, and the number of referrals to foreign centers gradually declined. In the meantime, a cardiological interventional program also improved. Today majority of standard congenital heart surgery procedures can be performed in Croatia. Last year our congenital heart team operated on 180 patients with low mortality and the interventional team (pediatric and adult) performed 66 procedures. In the article, we present positive shifts achieved during time as well as weaknesses and reasons for problems in establishing a high-quality CHD center. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-02-24 /pmc/articles/PMC8907509/ /pubmed/35282346 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fcvm.2022.793166 Text en Copyright © 2022 Malčić and Anić. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Cardiovascular Medicine
Malčić, Ivan
Anić, Darko
Pediatric Cardiac Service Development in Croatia
title Pediatric Cardiac Service Development in Croatia
title_full Pediatric Cardiac Service Development in Croatia
title_fullStr Pediatric Cardiac Service Development in Croatia
title_full_unstemmed Pediatric Cardiac Service Development in Croatia
title_short Pediatric Cardiac Service Development in Croatia
title_sort pediatric cardiac service development in croatia
topic Cardiovascular Medicine
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8907509/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35282346
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fcvm.2022.793166
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