Muhammad Younas, Masood Sadiq.
Recovery among children with acute Myocarditis.
Pak Paed J Jan ;31(4):177-81.

Aims: To study recovery among patients with acute myocarditis and to find out variables that may influence recovery. Setting: Department of Paediatric Cardiology, The Children`s Hospital & Institute of Child Health, Lahore; a tertiary referral centre. Patients & Methods: This is a descriptive study conducted on children admitted to a single centre from February 2003 to September 2004. Echocardiography was used to confirm dilated dysfunctioning heart with EF under 50%. Patients were treated with conservative management. Patients, clinically normal and LVEF > 50% were considered recovered in this study because of medium term follow up. Data was computed to study recovery and to find out factors that may affect recovery. Results: We studied 51 children with myocarditis. Presentation was with cardiac failure ± gallop rhythm. Common age group was 1- 5 years (66.7%) and 64.7 % patients presented with short duration of illness (< 2 weeks). Low voltage ECG observed in around 50 %. Anaemia and leucocytosis were commonly observed indicating possibility of bacterial etiology or associated infection. EF < 20 % on echocardiography was seen in 37 % of the patients. We compared variables among recovered and non recovered patients. We observed short duration of illness, presence of cardiac failure with gallop rhythm, low voltage ECG and EF between 20-50 % as predictors of favourable outcome. Conclusion: Acute myocarditis among children has excellent prognosis if properly managed in intensive care unit even with conservative management.

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