Abstract
Objective: In children with congenital heart defects (CHD), a sedentary lifestyle should be avoided and usually WHO recommendations on physical activity (PA) are supposed to be followed. In order to obtain representative data of the actual amount of PA (and potential influencing factors) in children with CHD we performed a nationwide online survey.Methods: All patients aged 6–17 years registered in the German National Register for CHD were contacted by email and asked to participate in the survey using the comprehensive questionnaire of the “Motorik-Modul” from the German Health Interview and Examination Survey for Children and Adolescents (KiGGS), thus allowing the comparison with a representative age-matched subset of 3.385 participants of the KiGGS study. The questionnaire for CHD-patients was amended by specific questions regarding medical care, sports recommendations and PA restrictions.Results: Complete datasets of 1.198 patients (mean age of 11.6 ± 3.1 years) were available for evaluation. Compared to the reference group, CHD patients significantly less frequently reached the WHO recommended level of 60 min of daily PA (8.8 vs. 12%; p < 0.001). Enjoyment in sports was almost equally distributed across CHD and reference groups, and strongly correlated with the level of PA (r = 0.41; p < 0.001). Remarkably, 49.2% of children with complex CHD, 31.7% with moderate, and even 13.1% with simple CHD were advised by their physician to restrict PA.Conclusions: According to this nationwide survey, PA is markedly reduced in children with CHD. An important reason for this might be an unexpected high rate of physician-recommended restrictions on levels of PA.
Highlights
Occurring at a rate of 1.1% out of all newborns, congenital heart defects (CHD) are the most frequent congenital malformation diagnosed in children [1]
Complete datasets were considered for evaluation and were available from 1.198 CHD patients with a mean age of 11.6 ± 3.1 years
49.2% of the children with complex CHD, 31.7% with moderate and even 13.1% with simple CHD were advised by their physician to restrict physical activity (PA). 2.3% of all CHD patients received even a complete dispensation
Summary
Occurring at a rate of 1.1% out of all newborns, congenital heart defects (CHD) are the most frequent congenital malformation diagnosed in children [1]. A recent study has suggested that myocardial infarction will become the leading cause of death in CHD patients with simple cardiac defects [5]. It is known, that development of arteriosclerotic and metabolic disease manifesting in adulthood usually starts already in early childhood. Childhood obesity and sedentary lifestyle are known to represent major contributing factors [5]. This highlights the need for primary prevention, lifestyle interventions are required to promote physical activity (PA) of pediatric CHD-patients [6, 7]. That PA is indispensable for physical, emotional, and psychosocial development of children [8,9,10]
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