Babies born with a hole in heart need not be operated immediately, suggests Dr Rakesh Jalota, a senior cardiologist from Lucknow.

According to Jalota, such congenital heart defects tend to close spontaneously within six weeks of birth.

“A general reaction to the diagnosis of the hole in the heart is that the child must be referred to tertiary health care,” said Jalota. “Such patients should, however, be deferred from active intervention. They should be managed medically for six to eight weeks as there is a significant chance for the hole’s spontaneous closure,” added Jalota.

“Of the 240 newborns with congenital heart defect that I studied , around 80 per cent of the cases with small holes improved within six weeks of birth due to spontaneous closure of the holes,” he said. His research on “Significance of Echocardiographic evaluation in Neonates with Respiratory Distress” was presented in the South African Heart Congress last month.

“Infants with any kind of breathing problem should immediately be subjected to echocardiography, which is the only means of timely diagnosis of hole in the infant’s heart,” said Jalota.

“Most of the children who develop breathing problem are not subjected to the test because gynaecologists and paediatrics tend to judge the problem as chest infection. In the event of sudden death, and with no postmortem analysis, it becomes impossible to know the cause,” said Jalota.