The present study aimed to determine the prevalence and distribution of congenital heart disease in patients who presented to the pediatric cardiology clinic. Material and Method: File records of the children who underwent transthoracic echocardiography within the 3-year period between January 2013 and December 2015 at the pediatric cardiology clinic were retrospectively evaluated. Congenital heart diseases were grouped as follows: diseases with a left-to-right shunt, obstructive diseases, cyanotic diseases, cardiac malposition, vascular ring and unclassified diseases. Prevalence of the diseases, distribution among gender and age groups were investigated. Results: This study included 12,342 subjects; 6996 (56.7%) subjects were male and 5346 (43.3%) subjects were female. The subjects were aged between 1 day and 18 years, and the median age was 7 years (IQR:10.5); 27.7% of the subjects were determined to have congenital heart disease. The prevalence of congenital heart disease was higher in males and in the 0-1 month age group. Of the subjects with congenital heart disease, 87% had a disease with a left-to-right shunt, 21.2% had an unclassified disease, 7% had obstructive disease, 1.6% had cyanotic disease, 0.8% had a vascular ring and 0.7% had cardiac malposition.
Conclusion:We recommend performing echocardiography in all children who presented to the pediatric cardiology clinic because one-fourth of these children have congenital heart disease. Conducting echocardiographic examination on new-borns who are referred to the pediatric cardiology department within the first month of life would enable detecting, particularly the diseases with a left-toright shunt and cyanotic congenital heart diseases, and ensure timely treatment planning.