title: Long-term follow up of infants with congenital diaphragmatic hernia.
abstract: With improving treatment strategies for congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) infants, an increase in survival of more severely affected patients can be expected. Consequently, more attention is now focused on long-term follow up of these patients. Many reports have emphasized associated morbidity, including pulmonary sequelae, neurodevelopmental deficits, gastrointestinal disorders, and other abnormalities. Therefore, survivors of CDH remain a complex patient population to care for throughout infancy and childhood, thus requiring long-term follow up. Much information has been provided from many centers regarding individual institutional improvements in overall survival. Few of these, however, have reported long-term follow up. The aim of this review is to describe the long-term outcome of survivors with CDH and to suggest a possible follow-up protocol for these patients.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical and Surgical Neonatology, Bambino Gesù Children's Hospital, Rome, Italy. bagolan@opbg.net
authors.forename: Pietro
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Bagolan
authors.forename: Francesco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Morini
mesh_terms: D002493:Central Nervous System Diseases / Q000209:etiology; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D005767:Gastrointestinal Diseases / Q000209:etiology; D006548:Hernia, Diaphragmatic / Q000628:therapy; D065630:Hernias, Diaphragmatic, Congenital; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008171:Lung Diseases / Q000209:etiology; D011788:Quality of Life; D017741:Survivors; D016896:Treatment Outcome