Title: Screening Newborns for Critical Congenital Heart Disease
Headings: Screening Newborns for Critical Congenital Heart Disease
Screening Newborns for Critical Congenital Heart Disease
Content: If the birth facility screens for CCHDs, make sure that all of your newborn patients are appropriately screened. If screening is mandated by your state, but your patient was not appropriately screened at the birth facility, develop strategies for screening in your office. If screening is not mandated in your state and your clinic has the equipment and would like to screen your asymptomatic patients who were not screened in their birth facility, you are certainly welcome to do so. However, you should first have a plan in place for what steps to take in the event that one of your patients fails the screening test. It is important to remember that pulse oximetry screening is just 1 additional tool to detect children with CCHDs. It is not intended to replace taking a complete family health and pregnancy history, and completing a physical examination of the newborn, which sometimes can detect CCHDs before the development of hypoxemia or can detect children whose CCHDs are missed by pulse oximetry. Realize that pulse oximetry screening does not detect all CCHDs, even all of the 7 main screening targets. A "passed" screen does not rule out the possibility of a CCHD or other heart defect in your patient. For every 3 children detected with a CCHD by screening, 1 child with a CCHD will still be missed. Continued vigilance is necessary to recognize congenital heart defects if signs or symptoms, such as tachypnea, cyanosis, weak pulses, failure to thrive, extreme sleepiness, or a heart murmur, occur.