Difficulty of Announcing Congenital Heart Disease in a Child in a Hospital Setting in our Context

Abstract

Congenital heart disease (CHD) is synonymous with a frequent, serious, very long-lasting disease. It is necessary throughout the child's development phase and conditions his or her lifestyle. This is due on the one hand to the physical health problem, but also to the appearance of secondary psychological and social disorders, the possible course of the child's life conditions the quality of it, his future autonomy is therefore the total success of the treatment. The problems of the child and his or her family must be addressed in a comprehensive manner by the paediatrician and the attending physician, who must accompany them in facing the obstacles of society. The pediatric cardiotrician and the attending physician must inform the parents of the diagnosis, although it is difficult, and endeavour to give all the required information and clear, precise recommendations, adapted to the specific situation of the child. In this work we report a prospective study on a series of 51 children and their parents over a period of 5 months in a hospital setting, while performing a bibliographic search in the main search engines and research in the field of psychology.