Prospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Cardiol. Mar 26, 2017; 9(3): 277-282
Published online Mar 26, 2017. doi: 10.4330/wjc.v9.i3.277
Children with transposition of the great arteries: Should they actually be born in Nigeria?
Barakat Adeola Animasahun, Akpoembele Deborah Madise-Wobo, Henry Olusegun Gbelee, Samuel Ilenre Omokhodion
Barakat Adeola Animasahun, Henry Olusegun Gbelee, Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, Lagos State University College of Medicine, Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Ikeja Lagos 23401, Nigeria
Akpoembele Deborah Madise-Wobo, Department of Paediatrics, Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Ikeja Lagos 23401, Nigeria
Samuel Ilenre Omokhodion, Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, University College Hospital, Ibadan 23401, Nigeria
Author contributions: Animasahun BA, Madise-Wobo AD, Gbelee HO and Omokhodion SI contributed equally to this work; Animasahun BA designed the research study; Animasahun BA, Madise-Wobo AD and Gbelee HO performed the research; Animasahun BA, Madise-Wobo AD, Gbelee HO and Omokhodion SI supplied the analytic tools; Animasahun BA and Madise-Wobo AD analyzed the data; Animasahun BA, Madise-Wobo AD, Gbelee HO and Omokhodion SI wrote the data; all the authors approved the final manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: The authors declare that no patient personal data appeared in this write-up. Echocardiography was done as part of the needed investigations in the care of the patients. No experiments were performed on the patients for this article.
Clinical trial registration statement: None of the subjects in this study were used for clinical trial.
Informed consent statement: Informed and written consent were obtained from the parent of the subjects before enrolment in the study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: No conflict of interest among the authors.
Data sharing statement: The data of the subjects in the study has not been shared with any individual or institution.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Barakat Adeola Animasahun, FACC, FWACP, FMCPaed, Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, Lagos State University College of Medicine, Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, 1-5 Oba Akinjobi Lane, Ikeja Lagos 23401, Nigeria. deoladebo@yahoo.com
Telephone: +234-01-8037250264
Received: August 24, 2016
Peer-review started: August 25, 2016
First decision: October 20, 2016
Revised: December 8, 2016
Accepted: January 2, 2017
Article in press: January 3, 2017
Published online: March 26, 2017
Processing time: 214 Days and 12 Hours
Abstract
AIM

To describe the clinical and echocardiographic features of Nigerian children with transposition of the great arteries and emphasize the need for collaboration with cardiac centres in the developed countries to be able to salvage the children.

METHODS

Prospective and cross sectional involving consecutive patients diagnosed with transposition of the great arteries using clinical evaluation and echocardiography at the Paediatric Department of Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Lagos Nigeria as part of a large study between January 2007 and December 2015.

RESULTS

There were 51 cases of transposition of the great arteries within the study period with a male to female ratio of 2:1 and a prevalence of 1.55 per 10000 among population of children who presented to centre during the study. Its proportion amongst children with congenital heart disease was 4.9%, while it was 15.4% among those with cyanotic congenital heart disease. The mean age ± SD of the subjects was 10.3 ± 21.8 mo. Up to 70% of the patients were less than 6 mo of age at initial presentation. The most common mode of presentation was cyanosis. The most common associated intracardiac anomaly was ventricular septal defect which occurred in 56% of the patients.

CONCLUSION

Transposition of the great arteries is as common in Nigeria as in the other parts of the world. The most common mode of presentation was cyanosis. There is an urgent need to establish paediatric cardiac centres in Nigeria if these children are to be salvaged.

Keywords: Transposition; Cyanosis; Children; Salvage; Nigeria

Core tip: Transposition of the great arteries is as common in Nigeria as in the other parts of the world. The most common mode of presentation in our subjects was cyanosis. Palliative and definitive interventions are currently not available for them in Nigeria. A lot of lives are being wasted yearly because of unavailable and inaccessible surgical care.