Heart Failure in Children

Dear Colleagues,

It is my privilege to invite you to contribute to the literature on pediatric heart failure (HF). As you all know, the management of HF in children has largely evolved based on clinical experience and the application of adult data, supported by the more limited pediatric literature. You can share your experience with managing acute and chronic HF in neonates and infants, mechanical circulatory support, HF in CHD, especially in patients with Fontan physiology, and in special circumstances such as chemotherapy-induced HF or HF associated with muscular dystrophies. This will help to improve research into pediatric HF treatments, and we all can learn from our collective experience.

The reported incidence of heart failure (HF) in children is 0.97 to 7.4 per 100,000. Heart-failure-related hospitalization occurs in 11,000–14,000 children annually in the US. In children, HF is most often caused by congenital heart disease (CHD) and cardiomyopathy. These causes are significantly different from those usually responsible for the condition in adults, which include coronary artery disease and hypertension. Current management and pharmacological therapy for HF in children are extrapolated from adult cardiology practices rather than from evidence from controlled clinical trials in children. There are significant barriers to applying adult data to children because of different disease mechanisms, variation in the pharmacodynamics of drugs used to treat HF from birth to adolescence, heterogeneous etiologies of cardiomyopathies, and differences in the genetic expression profiles of children with HF. However, clinical treatment of children with the same drugs that have proven to be beneficial in adults provides reassurance that the outcomes may be similarly helpful.

Dr. Bibhuti B. Das
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Children is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• cardiomyopathy
• mechanical circulatory support
• heart failure with CHD
• multidisciplinary care for HF in children
• pediatric heart failure