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Showing posts from September, 2020

How Charitable Donations Online Help In Child Heart Surgery

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When the lives of young children, the future of the world, hang in the balance due to a condition they have absolutely no control over, the future starts looking grey. In India, over 200,000 kids have a heart defect at birth, i.e, a Congenital Heart Defect, affecting their entire lives ahead of them. Most of them have to get not one but many surgeries of varying severity to combat this illness. Imagine the plight of a parent who has to see their child suffer from something as serious as a heart problem. To add to it, they find out the problem is critical and the child needs multiple rounds of life-altering  surgeries. Now, to add to it, the parents don’t have the affordability to fund the medical procedures. Just the thought of it gives you chills, doesn’t it? Here’s what we can do about it. Whilst we as individuals may not be able to directly provide the required medical aid to the child or reach out to the family, there is a way to help them alleviate their agony of having to see

How to be cautious about symptoms of CHD during Covid-19 Lockdown

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As the world grappled with the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, many countries including India, imposed a nation-wide lockdown. And this meant an even worsened situation for non-communicable diseases like congenital heart defects. As an organization aiding the t reatment for congenital heart defects in children , Genesis Foundation also faced unique challenges in trying to ensure that children were provided timely medical intervention. For first-time parents and parents of new-born children, they’re often thrust into a world of unknown when something unusual happens to the child. In such a situation, tele-consultation and tele-medicine is highly advisable. Symptoms to Look out For If you as a parent see your child or someone you know whose child exhibits symptoms like rapid breathing, swelling in legs, stomach, around the eyes, difficulty in taking feed, extreme exhaustion or fatigues, incessant crying or a blue tinge to the skin etc., then immediately call your consulting doctor/pedia

The Role of Cardiac Imaging in Congenital Heart Defects

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We live in the era of non-invasive imaging in medicine. The top rankers in the nation-wide competitive exam for post-graduate medical education invariably choose radiology as their specialization of choice. What is Cardiac Imaging? Imaging is the main pillar of congenital heart disease (CHD) diagnosis and  congenital heart disease treatment . A  century earlier CHD was suspected clinically and diagnosed on an autopsy performed after the child died.   Even four decades earlier, CHD was diagnosed by cardiac catheterization and angiography. This was an invasive procedure which carried a small but definite risk of adverse events. Thankfully, advances in non-invasive imaging have allowed a more accurate and safe diagnosis of CHD in neonates, infants and young children. The three modalities which we use most commonly in clinical practice are the echocardiogram , the computerized tomogram (CT) and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMR). There is a peculiar challenge in imaging the heart un