Dr. Besser Weighs In: Children’s Heart Health

The timeliness of this effort though tinged with personal sadness is superb. I applaud the efforts of Dr. Higgins having been visited upon by tragic circumstances stemming from a lack of knowing our late son who collapsed on a soccer field this past summer had a cardiac condition. As I watched the news item, I was extremely touched by the nobility of the effort. Many families will be spared tragedy if this effort is given the support it truly deserves. Dr. Higgins, please keep it up. We will support you any which way we can.

I am writing concerning my 11 year old grandson. He has had many test for a heart condition over the last few months. My daughter was told his heart was larger on one side but with his stress test a few weeks ago was told he just has a special heart and no other test was needed. I am very concerned because she was told early on that he could have trouble in the future. Should he have more test regularly to see if there is any change? He has very bad headaches at times.
Please let me know if he should have more test.
Thank you very much for your opinion.

I would also like to comment regarding this screening program. I am a registered nurse and my best-friend’s son died suddenly in September from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which presents typically without symptoms. In Cincinnati, Christ Hospital where I work provides a $99.00 echo screening test which can detect 80% of ALL heart anomalies that children may present with. The tartget age is 14-25, with a large focus on athletes. Studies show that 1 in 100 people have one of these anomalies that may be lethal. Of the 76 people screened they have already detected an individual with one of these conditions. Yes, our children must be screened! Ohio screens newborns for 29 different things, we get mammograms, and we have colonoscopies as screenings, so let me ask this question to anyone who reads this to answer – If you had a ticking time bomb in your hands what would you do? That’s right you would diffuse it or get rid of it. Have a screening done, sound heart, sound mind, think about it.

In June of this year, my 12 year old son Brendan was struck in the chest with a baseball. It was first thought that the symptoms he was experiencing were from chest trauma. After a series of tests, he was diagnosed with myocarditis. If he were not hit with a baseball, it scares me to think what he could have possibly gone through. This testing could save lives!

This story really hit home. About 15 years ago, I lost a 7th grade athlete during basketball practice. It was at the end of practice when the players were running wind sprints. Shawn was usually the fastest, he seemed to be the most athletic. At the end of a sprint he collapsed and died.
After maybe 3 months, the final autopsy report returned and we were told that Shawn’s arteries nearest the heart appeared normal sized, but the walls were thick so the inside diameter was quite small. We were told Shawn was dead when he hit the floor. What a terrible thing to happen to someone so young. I understand the only way to have prevented this was to actually look inside the arteries during a catheterization. Or perhaps Dr. Besser’s screening could have prevented Shawn’s death.
Now I have a 13 year old son who has a resting heart rate of between 105-120. He has trouble keeping up with his peers in soccer. We’ve had him looked at but have been told he’s fine. When I first noticed it, I took him to the Emergency Room where he spent a couple of hours while they ran lots of tests.
You think I’m not worried?

My granddaughter was screened at the trial run of this study before they went out to the schools, last April. She is slender/average, very active, quite healthy. Although they did not find any of the problems that cause the kids to have sudden cardiac arrest, they did find an ASD which is a hole in between 2 chambers of the heart. We had a device installed to close it in August by a cath procedure, where they use a catheter and go through her arteries in her leg. My point is that normal, healthy-looking kids can have hidden time bombs in heart deformities. She might have developed a stroke or irreversible lung disease had this not been detected and treated.

I think testing children at a young age is an excellent idea. My daughter regularly saw her pediatrician, and nothing was ever detected in the office. It wasn’t until she started fainting at school, that we took her to get an EKG. She was 15 yrs. old and the EKG showed “possible Long QT Syndrome” which causes “sudden death”. After numerous tests with a specialist -she is now on a beta blocker and hasn’t fainted anymore. She cannot do sports anymore, but I feel blessed in that she is alive; she could have been one of over 2,000 people who die each year of sudden death. More needs to be done to protect these children to save their lives and figure out what is causing so many children to have these problems with their hearts.

My family suddenly lost my (otherwise) healthy 20 year old nephew this summer to sudden cardiac failure during a practice with his college soccer team. The cause of death was ARVD. His death was entirely preventable and it astounds me that screening is not routinely conducted on young people, particularly those who participate in athletics, especially when the diagnostic equipment is widely available. I really hate to think that this all comes down to numbers, that the number of deaths in young people from this condition, and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, is low and the cost of screening is high. You simply can’t put a price tag on a life.

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