Editorial
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2024. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Cardiol. Jan 26, 2024; 16(1): 1-4
Published online Jan 26, 2024. doi: 10.4330/wjc.v16.i1.1
Development of pulmonary hypertension remains a major hurdle to corrective surgery in Down syndrome
Akash Batta, Juniali Hatwal
Akash Batta, Department of Cardiology, Dayanand Medical College and Hospital, Ludhiana 141001, Punjab, India
Juniali Hatwal, Department of Internal Medicine, Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education & Research, Chandigarh 160012, India
Author contributions: Batta A and Hatwal J contributed equally to this work.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (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: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Akash Batta, Doctor, MD, Assistant Professor, Researcher, Department of Cardiology, Dayanand Medical College and Hospital, Tagore Nagar, Civil Lines, Ludhiana 141001, Punjab, India. akashbatta02@gmail.com
Received: November 5, 2023
Peer-review started: November 5, 2023
First decision: November 30, 2023
Revised: December 3, 2023
Accepted: December 18, 2023
Article in press: December 18, 2023
Published online: January 26, 2024
Processing time: 74 Days and 10.4 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: Down syndrome is the most common chromosomal abnormality with roughly half of them having associated congenital heart disease (CHD). People with Down syndrome are especially predisposed to early development of severe pulmonary hypertension (PH) compared with CHDs in general population. It is not uncommon to come across Down syndrome patients with uncorrected shunts in adulthood with irreversible PH at which stage the only option available is a combined heart-lung transplant. However, despite the guidelines laid by authorities, the rates of cardiac transplant in adults with Down syndrome remain dismal largely attributable to the high prevalence of intellectual disability in them.