Etiological Peculiarities in Pediatric Heart Failure

Heart failure in children presents important characteristic features different from adult congestive failure, from a pathophysiological and mostly from an etiopathogenic point of view. Heart failure in children is, in most cases, a consequence of congenital structural cardiac abnormalities that remained unoperated, underwent a palliative operation or presented post-surgery complications, or of cardiomyopathy. Based on the nature of the clinical presentation, new onset heart failure can be differentiated from transient heart failure and chronic heart failure. Chronic heart failure may occur in children with biventricular circulation (systolic or diastolic dysfunction), in cardiac structural abnormalities with a right systemic ventricle and in the so-called univentricular heart. Acute heart failure can appear as acute heart failure at onset or as an aggravation of heart failure on the background of acute decompensated chronic heart failure.