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May 22, 2007 -- The American Heart Association has issued eight new recommendations to help reduce congenital heart defects in babies.
The recommendations include actions women can take before becoming pregnant.
The recommendations, printed in the journal Circulation, are as follows:
Those tips, endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics, come from doctors who reviewed research on uninherited risk factors for congenital heart defects.
They included Catherine Webb, MD. She works in Chicago as a pediatric cardiologist at Children's Memorial Hospital and as a pediatrics professor at Northwestern University's medical school.
In an American Heart Association news release, Webb stresses "the need to think about prevention of heart defects in babies before conception and very early in pregnancy.
"Paying attention to parental lifestyle issues and the association with congenital heart disease is a good start," says Webb.
"However," she adds, "congenital heart disease may still occur in children despite excellent prenatal care and the very best efforts on the parents' part."
Webb's team only reviewed observational studies, which don't directly test strategies to prevent congenital heart defects. It's possible that unmeasured factors affected the studies' results.
Webb and colleagues aren't blaming congenital heart defects on what parents did or didn't do before having a baby. Doctors often don't know exactly why congenital heart defects occur, and genes can play a role in congenital heart defects.
"It is very important to continue to learn much more about prevention of congenital heart disease through ongoing research," says Webb.