Congenital Heart Disease (Adults)

Congenital heart disease is not limited to infants and children. An estimated one million adults in America are living with heart defects. Most of these people have few physical limitations or symptoms. However, more and more of adults with heart defects are requiring medical attention, either for newly diagnosed conditions or for abnormalities that were treated years ago but are causing new problems.

Ironically, the growing incidence of adult congenital heart disease is due to progress in cardiology and cardiac surgery. Only a generation or two ago, doctors could do little to help newborns with serious heart defects, and few survived past childhood. That began to change in the 1960s, with advances in diagnosis, medical therapy, open-heart surgery, and critical care, allowing more and more these children to live well into adulthood. Many of this first wave of survivors, now in their thirties and forties, are beginning to experience problems related to their original heart defects or to their surgical repairs (over time, tissue grafts wear out, surgically constructed openings grow too large, or re-routed blood vessels calcify and harden or develop dangerous bulges, to cite a few examples).

Few hospitals are equipped to handle adults with serious congenital heart disease, however. Typically, these conditions are complex, involving several parts of the heart or its vessels. It’s not uncommon for adults with congenital heart disease to have undergone three, four, or five operations, drastically altering the heart’s anatomy. Repairing these hearts is rarely straightforward. Each case is different, requiring a surgeon not only with experience in handling oft-repaired hearts, but also with the skills needed to improvise surgical solutions.

Our Heart Disease Specialists

NYU Langone Medical Center
550 First Avenue
New York, NY 10016
1-877-4-NYUCVI (698284)