A Multi-center Longitudinal Cohort Study on Peri-operative Nutrition in Infants With Congenital Heart Disease

Children with congenital heart disease need surgery. However, extracorporeal circulation surgery can lead to systemic inflammatory reaction and ischemia, while reperfusion injury leads to metabolic disorders, with increased metabolism, hyperbolism and reduced anabolism. The redistribution of systemic blood and the ischemic and microcirculatory disorder state of gastrointestinal tract cause damage to the gastrointestinal mucosa and indigestion. Excessive fluid limitation after surgery and positive application of positive inotropic drugs were positively correlated with energy metabolism rate. Additionally, the lack of scientific feeding knowledge and poor eating habits of parents can increase the risk of malnutrition in children. Surgery is the most effective way of treating congenital heart disease. Although the cardiac malformation has been corrected and the heart function has been returned to normal, there are still some children cannot quickly get rid of malnutrition. To our knowledge, postoperative malnutrition affects wound healing in the short term. Long-term malnutrition and lack of calories and protein intake lead to the lack of trace elements, low immune function, easy secondary infection, and affect children's heart, organ function and intellectual development. In conclusion, this group of children with congenital heart disease should draw more extensive attention. And the scientific and reasonable feeding knowledge of infants should be widely carried out, which has far-reaching significance. Therefore, this multi-center cohort study is proposed.

We purposed to carry out a multi-center cohort study, and all infants under 1 year old with congenital heart disease undergone surgery in these hospitals were included. We aimed to follow up a long-term, tracking the nutrition status and motor development. The eligible patients in Guangzhou Women and Children's Medical Center, Shenzhen Children's Hospital, Gansu Provincial Maternity and Child-care Hospital, Zhengzhou Cardiovascular hospital, The Children's Hospital Zhejiang University school of medicine will be included. The baseline data will be collected before surgery, and physical, laboratory and imaging examination will be follow at pre and 1, 3, 6, 12 months post surgery to tracking the change of nutrition status (measured as WAZ, WHZ and HAZ). Questionnaires including emotional and social scales will be assigned pre and post surgery for causal inference and life quality evaluation.

The benefits of our follow up were:

1. patients will be asked to come back to the clinic for periodic review at certain time；
2. specialized people conduct follow up the cohort study；
3. A website system had been established to collect the information of patients:

1. professional CRF forms were unified; 2) the website has quality control features. 3) specialized people are responsible for maintaining the website. 4) the website guarantee the long-distance multi-center communication. 5) the website has a reminder of follow-up.