Feasibility of a Team Approach to Complex Congenital Heart Defect Neurodevelopmental Follow-Up: Early Experience of a Combined Cardiology/Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Follow-Up Program.

Infants with complex congenital heart disease are at high risk for poor neurodevelopmental outcomes. However, implementation of dedicated congenital heart disease follow-up programs presents important infrastructure, personnel, and resource challenges. We present the development, implementation, and retrospective review of 1- and 2-year outcomes of a Complex Congenital Heart Defect Neurodevelopmental Follow-Up program. This program was a synergistic approach between the Pediatric Cardiology, Cardiothoracic Surgery, Pediatric Intensive Care, and Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Follow-Up teams to provide a feasible and responsible utilization of existing infrastructure and personnel, to develop and implement a program dedicated to children with congenital heart disease. Trained developmental testers administered the Ages and Stages Questionnaire-3 over the phone to the parents of all referred children at least once between 6 and 12 months' corrected age. At 18 months' corrected age, all children were scheduled in the Neonatal Intensive-Care Unit Follow-Up Clinic for a visit with standardized neurological exams, Bayley III, multidisciplinary therapy evaluations and continued follow-up. Of the 132 patients identified in the Cardiothoracic Surgery database and at discharge from the hospital, a total number of 106 infants were reviewed. A genetic syndrome was identified in 23.4% of the population. Neuroimaging abnormalities were identified in 21.7% of the cohort with 12.8% having visibly severe insults. As a result, 23 (26.7%) received first-time referrals for early intervention services, 16 (13.8%) received referrals for new services in addition to their existing ones. We concluded that utilization of existing resources in collaboration with established programs can ensure targeted neurodevelopmental follow-up for all children with complex congenital heart disease.

Neuroimaging identifies increased manganese deposition in infants receiving parenteral nutrition.

BACKGROUND: Manganese, an essential metal for normal growth and development, is neurotoxic on excessive exposure. Standard trace element-supplemented neonatal parenteral nutrition (PN) has a high manganese content and bypasses normal gastrointestinal absorptive control mechanisms, which places infants at risk of manganese neurotoxicity. Magnetic resonance (MR) relaxometry demonstrating short T1 relaxation time (T1R) in the basal ganglia reflects excessive brain manganese accumulation. OBJECTIVE: This study tested the hypothesis that infants with greater parenteral manganese exposure have higher brain manganese accumulation, as measured by MR imaging, than do infants with lower parenteral manganese exposure. DESIGN: Infants exposed to parenteral manganese were enrolled in a prospective cohort study. Infants classified as having high manganese exposure received >75% of their nutrition in the preceding 4 wk as PN. All others were classified as having low exposure. Daily parenteral and enteral manganese intakes were calculated. Whole-blood manganese was measured by high-resolution inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. Brain MR relaxometry was interpreted by a masked reviewer. Linear regression models, adjusted for gestational age (GA) at birth, estimated the association of relaxometry indexes with total and parenteral manganese exposures. RESULTS: Seventy-three infants were enrolled. High-quality MR images were available for 58 infants, 39 with high and 19 with low manganese exposure. Four infants with a high exposure had blood manganese concentrations >30 µg/L. After controlling for GA, higher parenteral and total manganese intakes were associated with a lower T1R (P = 0.01) in the globus pallidus and putamen but were not associated with whole-blood manganese (range: 3.6-56.6 µg/L). Elevated conjugated bilirubin magnified the association between parenteral manganese and decreasing T1R. CONCLUSION: A short T1R for GA identifies infants at risk of increased brain manganese deposition associated with PN solutions commonly used to nourish critically ill infants. These trials were registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT00392977 and NCT00392730.