An investigation of neurophysical outcome in paediatric heart surgery patients

Abstract

Advances in open-heart surgery have resulted in operations being carried out in early infancy.  Numerous studies have been conducted with adults that indicate a variety of neuropsychological deficits after open-heart surgery (e.g. Vingerhoets, Van Nooten,  Vermassen, de Soete & Jannes, 1997) which may be associated with the influence of ischaemic-hypoxic injury upon the brain.  However, little is known about the effect of cardiac surgery in the cognitive development of children.

This thesis consists of two papers, the first being a literature review which provides a critique of the existing research in the field of infant cardiac surgery, with particular reference to factors that could contribute to postoperative neurological and neuropsychological morbidity.  Given the paucity of evidence, the second paper (empirical) documents the findings from a neuropsychological outcome study of paediatric heart surgery patients which was conducted to contribute to current knowledge in this area.  The findings of this study are outlined and recommendations are made regarding the direction in which future research should proceed.

More information

Identifiers

Catalogue record

Export record

ASCII CitationAtomBibTeXData Cite XMLDublin CoreDublin CoreEP3 XMLEndNoteHTML CitationHTML CitationHTML ListJSONMETSMODSMPEG-21 DIDLOpenURL ContextObjectOpenURL ContextObject in SpanRDF+N-TriplesRDF+N3RDF+XMLRIOXX2 XMLReferReference ManagerSimple Metadata