title: [Role of the general practitioner or primary care physician in the management of adult congenital heart disease].
abstract: Congenital heart diseases are the most common inborn defect, occurring approximately 0.8% according to the last European Union count. This rate is stable for decades. Nowadays, up to 90% of children born with congenital heart diseases underwent surgical correction and reach adulthood, gratefully to the surgery and interventional cardiology advances, in conjunction to the post-surgery and following cares improvement. Both of this facts results to a growing population of adults with congenital heart diseases, actually exceeding the infant population. This arising population will lead general practitioners and primary care physicians to face more often this kind of patient. The needed cares are specifics, regarding the typical evolutions of this pathologies, as well as because congenital heart diseases wil impact other pathologies or usual cares. The need of an extended knowledge of the adult patients with congenital heart diseases is clearly emerging, and should lead the whole medical corps to work in close network.
authors.affiliation: Service des pathologies cardiaques congénitales de l'enfant et de l'adulte, hôpital Haut-Lévêque, 33604 Pessac Cedex, France. jean-benoit.thambo@chu-bordeaux.fr
authors.forename: Jean-Benoît
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Thambo
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D058006:General Practice; D058005:General Practitioners; D006330:Heart Defects, Congenital / Q000628:therapy*; D006801:Humans; D010819:Physician's Role; D058007:Physicians, Primary Care; D011320:Primary Health Care