City witnesses a rise in infants born with ‘spongy heart’
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Sedentary lifestyle, bad food habits and lack of adequate vitamins don't just affect adults.
The effects are manifested even in new-borns, who can be born with what is called a ‘spongy heart’ (a heart that is not compact and has several lose holes in between).
As the world commemorates yet another Heart Day to generate awareness about preventing cardiovascular diseases among women and children, in Bengaluru a rise in the number of infants born with spongy heart in the past few years has been observed.
In the past two years alone, 62 infants were born with this heart condition at the city's Sri Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences and Research.
Dr I.B. Vijayalakshmi, paediatric cardiologist at the hospital says, “In my decades of experience never ever have I seen such a huge number of infants born with spongy heart as I have seen in these two years.
Unlike normal infants who have a very compact heart, infants with such spongy hearts have very loose tissue and the muscle cells are not properly interwoven because of which the babies lose their capacity to pump the blood and the heart rate goes below the required 100 per minute.
We have detected such spongy heart defects in a 24-week old foetus as well.” There are no studies to date that throw any light on the cause of such a heart condition.
"I have received a study conducted on mice at Cambridge University that established that this condition is generally caused by lack of nutrition and deficiency of vitamin A. We are planning to conduct a study very soon in this field,” Dr Vijayalakshmi said.
Other reasons could be pregnant mothers suffering from stress, a change in their lifestyle, smoking and alcohol consumption, late deliveries, malnutrition and anaemia.
Dr Srikanth S. Raghavan, consultant paediatric cardiologist asserts that now there is more awareness among specialists and better technology to recognise and treat spongy heart problem.
“Generally, when there is an arrest in the maturation of the heart, infants tend to have non-compacted
heart. Unable to pump the blood, such infants suffer from respiratory problems, fail to cope with stress and get tired and weak very fast.”
Genetic and environmental factors could be causing this defect but there is no established cause as of now, he added.
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