Respiratory syncytial virus infection in children with congenital heart defects: Problem relevance and prevention guidelines

<p>Congenital heart defects in children are the most important problem in neonatology and pediatrics, by making a significant contribution to the structure of neonatal/infantile mortality and childhood morbidity. Irrespective of the type of a defect, its presence affects hemodynamics and impairs normal vital activity. Children with hemodynamic heart defects belong to a risk group for severe respiratory syncytial (RS) virus infection. Contagion of such patients increases the length of their hospital stay, changes time periods for surgical intervention, complicates a postoperative period, and raises the risk of a fatal outcome. The possibilities of treatment for the infection are limited. Therefore its prevention is put in the forefront; for this purpose, palivizumab, the world's only drug, is used for the passive immunoprevention of RS virus infection in children at risk for its severe form. The drug can reduce in-hospital morbidity and the duration and severity of the disease. The current worldwide protocols for RS virus infection prevention are unified in terms of classifying the patients with congenital heart defects as a category requiring protection. The international and Russian experience with palivizumab could elaborate and propose the guidelines for the prevention of RS viral infection in patients with hemodynamic congenital heart defects, which are given in this paper and have been approved at the congress on Pediatric Cardiology 2014.