One in every one hundred babies born each year is born with a heart condition. Often called heart disease or defect, some are minor and self correct during childhood. Some are repaired or semi-repaired with surgical procedures. Repeat surgery is not uncommon for some conditions, as the heart grows through childhood to adulthood. This can cause it's own problems as repeated surgical procedures causes tissue scaring. Other conditions are irreparable and a child, adolescent or adult is faced with continuing challenges.

Some adults with congenital heart conditions eventually have to rely on medication to keep the heart strong and regular. There can be problems of arrhythmias and some have to rely on Pacemakers. Actual conditions include:

• atrial and ventricle septal defects

• tetralogy of fallot

• coarctation of the aorta

• transposition of the great arteries

• tricuspid atresia

• pulmonary atresia

This is by no means a complete list.

ACHC are not at a stage yet where we can bring you detailed descriptions of these conditions. However the world wide web is a good place to start. An internet resource that will tell you more about these conditions can be found at The Royal Children's Hospital's Cardiac website. We encourage you to get to know your condition and review your understanding with your cardiologist so that you are more able to make educated descisions about treatments and procedures and care for your health.

If you have www sites that you have found to be informative and think they will benifit our members, please email us the URLs and we will check them out.

We can not at this stage endorse the information of the following sites, however we have aimed to provide you with reliable links. The information displayed on these sites are not the responsiblity of ACHC New Zealand - if you have any difficuty with the sites please contact the webmasters of the sites, and inform us so that we are able to review our links. Enjoy!