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Natural history of persistent ductus arteriosus.
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Campbell, M. H. |
| Copyright Year | 1968 |
| Abstract | The natural history of typhoid fever is not too difficult to describe. It needs only accurate observers who have followed groups of patients for some months. For cardiac infarction, it is more difficult since this leaves some residual disability, a risk of recurrences, and a shorter expectation of life. Several follow-up studies for 10-20 years have, however, given us a fair picture. It is much harder to describe the natural history of persistent ductus arteriosus or of any malformation of the heart, except those like aortic atresia that cause the early death of all subjects. The problem is more akin to that of the Government Actuary in estimating the expectation of life in the general population. Here the observer does not live long enough to follow a group of the observed through their lives, and has to work from the proportions dying each year at various ages and so on. Everyone agrees that the expectation of life for those with persistent ductus arteriosus is shortened, but their lives are often too long to be covered by a doctor's ordinary time in practice. A reasonable, but possibly less accurate, method is dividing the patients into decades when they were under observation, studying the mortality and other events in each decade separately, and combining them to show a picture of the outlook for life. This method was used by Campbell and Baylis (1956) for coarctation, and by Campbell, Neill, and Suzman (1957) for atrial septal defect, and is used here with the much greater precision that follows from measuring the patient-years-the number of patients multiplied by the average number of years they were under observation. There are special difficulties about the natural history of most malformations of the heart because there was such a short interval between the times when they were diagnosed with any frequency and when they began to be relieved or cured by operation. More than a century ago Wilkinson King |
| Starting Page | 4 |
| Ending Page | 13 |
| Page Count | 10 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://heart.bmj.com/content/heartjnl/30/1/4.full.pdf?ijkey=a13c094189c20120adbf241c5553a878f96c9671&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha |
| PubMed reference number | 5637557v1 |
| Volume Number | 30 |
| Issue Number | 1 |
| Journal | British heart journal |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Subject Keyword | Aortic coarctation Atrial Septal Defects Cessation of life Congenital Abnormality Congenital atresia of aortic valve Estimated Heart Atrium Heart Septal Defects Impatent structure Myocardial Infarction Natural History Patent ductus arteriosus Patients Recurrence (disease attribute) Structure of ductus arteriosus Typhoid Fever observers |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
