Obesity is a chronic, complex and multifactorial disease

with severe short- and long-term adverse consequences.

The prevalence of childhood obesity has increased at an

alarming pace in recent decades, and it is one of the most
serious public health problems of the XXI century.

Arterial hypertension (HTN)

Dislipidemia Insulin resistance

Glucose intolerance Type 26 diabetes

sleep apnoea Pulmonary hypertension

secondary
Left ventricular hypertrophy

Assess the magnitude of the

Retrospective and descriptive.
problem of overweight and obesity
in patients with CHD that have 6–17 years.
been treated, as well as the
association between systolic HTN
as a potential early complication surgerys or therapeutic cardiac
of excess weight. catheterization for treatment of CHD.

Unidad de Cardiología
Pediátrica del Hospital Virgen de las
Nieves de Granada (España).

Patients by reviewing the

electronic health records stored in the
• We performed a analysis to
CardioPed database.
evaluate the differences
between the groups under
study. • Children with treated CHD into 3
• We compared qualitative groups.
variables by means of the • Patients with CHD repaired
χ2 test and quantitative surgically or through cardiac
variables by means of the catheterization without
independent t test or the significant residual.
Mann–Whitney U test in • Patients with univentricular heart
case the assumption of and Fontan circulation.
normality was not met.
• We selected 225 patients treated
summarises the clinical characteristics and
for CHD. We excluded 5 due to the
anthropometric and SBP measurements of cases and controls.
lack of BP measurements in their
records.
• The final sample included a total of
440 patients—220 with treated CHD
and 220 healthy controls.
• The mean age was 11.2 years, and
57% of the patients were male.

We did not find differences in the prevalence of excess weight between male and female patients in
either the case group (P = .293) or the control group (P = .639).

The largest group of patients with treated CHD corresponded to the group without haemodynamically
significant residual defects, as can be seen in Table 2.

A salient finding in our study was that in patients treated for CHD, the proportion of obesity was higher than
the proportion of overweight and significantly higher compared to the control group.

The challenge we currently face is to help as many patients as

possible achieve a good quality of life, and therefore it is crucial
to prevent exposure, starting in childhood, to modifiable
cardiovascular risk factors that may have a negative impact on
health in the short and the long term.

• Overweight and obesity are frequent in

children treated for CHD. Silvia García
• Systolic blood percentiles are higher in Carol Farfán
patients with excess weight compared Alejandra Rueda
to patients with normal weight. Natalia Flórez
• The prevention of obesity should be an Jordy Mosquera
essential component of health M. Fernanda Gallego
promotion in the entire paediatric
population and an even greater
priority in children with CHD, who are
more vulnerable to cardiovascular
complications.