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Medicine and Healthcare

How High Can I Jump?

Study Yielded Reference Values for Diagnostics and Treatment

Each congenital heart defect is specific and has an individual effect on the physical exercise capacity. Thanks to many patients' voluntary participation in the National Register, the treating physicians today have more precise reference points for evaluation.

Running, Dancing, Playing Soccer?

What can our child expect of their own exercise capacity? What is there between laissez faire and wrapping the child up in cotton wool? For parents of heart children these questions are important. In order to provide optimal counseling and treatment, doctors in fact have to be able to assess the exercise capacity of patients with congenital heart disease as accurately as possible.

Reference Values Growing With the Patients

In order to do so, they need reliable reference points. Such reference values growing from "small" to "big" could only be developed by comparing the exercise capacity of children, adolescents, adults and seniors with and without congenital heart disease.

Cycling For Research

From 2005 to 2014, different heart centers in Germany measured, analyzed and compared continuously. For this purpose, the study participants rode bicycles, ran and went for walks. Roughly 1,000 Register members took part back then. The reference values hereby developed enable treating physicians of today to match their patients' values with them and to thus determine their individual exercise capacity.

  • Scientific Details of the Study

    Reference Values for Diagnostics, Treatment, Counseling and Research

    How is our cardiac child doing? And where do I stand, as an adult patient, compared to my healthy peers?

    For patients with congenital heart disease, these questions have to be answered time and again and on an individual basis. The multicenter cross-sectional study of the Competence Network yielded results that help with the answering. Thanks to the study we can now draw on comprehensive reference values regarding the physical capacity that are related to age, sex and type of heart defect. They allow defining the effect of a treatment in relation to a patient's physiologic growth and to draw conclusions as to treatment options. Data were collected across Germany by a total of 22 pediatric heart centers which all used the same method.

    Learn more about the study design, material and methods, as well as the study's background.

    Impact of gender and age on cardiovascular function late after repair of tetralogy of Fallot: percentiles based on cardiac magnetic resonance.

    Sarikouch S, Koerperich H, Dubowy KO, Boethig D, Boettler P, Mir TS, Peters B, Kuehne T, Beerbaum P; German Competence Network for Congenital Heart Defects Investigators.
    Circ Cardiovasc Imaging. 2011 Nov;4(6):703-11. doi: 10.1161/CIRCIMAGING.111.963637. Epub 2011 Sep 9.

    Right ventricular function in grown-up patients after correction of congenital right heart disease.

    Lemmer J, Heise G, Rentzsch A, Boettler P, Kuehne T, Dubowy KO, Peters B, Lemmer B, Hager A, Stiller B; German Competence Network for Congenital Heart Defects.
    Clin Res Cardiol. 2011 Apr;100(4):289-96. doi: 10.1007/s00392-010-0241-8. Epub 2010 Oct 28.

    A practical and transferable new protocol for treadmill testing of children and adults.

    Dubowy KO1, Baden W, Bernitzki S, Peters B.
    Cardiol Young. 2008 Dec;18(6):615-23.

    Learn more about the study design, material and methods, as well as the background of the study:

    Publications

    • 11/2011

      Impact of gender and age on cardiovascular function late after repair of tetralogy of Fallot: percentiles based on cardiac magnetic resonance.

      Sarikouch S, Koerperich H, Dubowy KO, Boethig D, Boettler P, Mir TS, Peters B, Kuehne T, Beerbaum P

      Circulation. Cardiovascular imaging 4, 6, 703-11, (2011). Show this publication on PubMed.

    • 4/2011

      Right ventricular function in grown-up patients after correction of congenital right heart disease.

      Lemmer J, Heise G, Rentzsch A, Boettler P, Kuehne T, Dubowy KO, Peters B, Lemmer B, Hager A, Stiller B

      Clinical research in cardiology : official journal of the German Cardiac Society 100, 4, 289-96, (2011). Show this publication on PubMed.

    • 12/2008

      A practical and transferable new protocol for treadmill testing of children and adults.

      Dubowy KO, Baden W, Bernitzki S, Peters B

      Cardiology in the young 18, 6, 615-23, (2008). Show this publication on PubMed.

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