“Heart children” - Children with congenital heart defects
In Germany alone, 8,700 children are born with a congenital heart defect every year. Today, around 90% of them reach adulthood. There are currently over 300,000 adults with congenital heart defects living in Germany. The range of different heart defects is large and complex.
Prognosis for children with congenital heart defects
The outlook for children with congenital heart defects varies greatly, as it depends on the severity of the heart defect and the time of diagnosis. Thanks to medical advances, particularly in cardiac surgery, 90 percent of children with congenital heart defects now reach adulthood.
New ventricles for small patients
The Institute of Experimental Pharmacology at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf and the Helmholtz Institute for Biomedical Engineering in Aachen are working together on a promising solution for affected children. They are developing a bioartificial heart chamber made from living muscle cells to help children with half a heart. It can contract naturally and generates a directed blood flow that supplies the organism of small patients with oxygen.
"Helping small hearts"
The Children's Heart Foundation is committed to helping children with congenital heart defects throughout Germany by funding research projects. The foundation is committed to ensuring that young patients receive optimal treatment in highly specialized children's heart competence centres. Thanks to the progress made by researching doctors and scientists, the lives of children with heart defects can now be saved in over 90 percent of cases. The foundation relies on donations for its work. Dr. Weigert has been supporting the Children's Heart Foundation very generously and particularly for the project "Contractile Fontan Tunnel Development of a bioartificial right ventricle" at the UKE Hamburg for years. This will enable further medical progress to be made in this field and increase the chances of a more carefree life for children with congenital heart defects.
More information at www.stiftung-kinderherz.de
