Editorial - April 2020

Dear members of the ESC working Group on  Adult Congenital Heart Disease

We are in the midst of this terrible corona crisis and I sincerely hope you are all in good health and can continue with optimal care for our patients.

These are strange times and it is with great pity that we had to cancel EuroGUCH 2020 in Leuven. At this place I want to thank Professor Werner Budts as the local host and the complete team of the Belgium ACHD professionals for their excellent efforts provided. It is always a tremendous work to organize such an international meeting and the preparations have taken more than a year. The planning of these congresses are scheduled well in advance and therefore we will NOT go to Leuven in 2021 but hopefully some years later we will have the pleasure of experiencing the Belgium hospitality and the high standards and scientific level. For now the plan is to organize EuroGUCH 2021 in Sevilla, with local host Pastora Gallego.

 I am not sure how you have organized your outpatient clinics in this coronary crisis, but as a matter of fact in my own center we try to continue the care and still see patients for their regular checks. This is also to prevent the huge problem of not be able to see all patients after the corona crisis. For some patents a telephone call can be sufficient, but for many others a regular check is still required.

Some international collaborations have started studying ACHD patients with corona infection. The inclusion just started and we have to wait for the results.

Finally I want to mention that in the Netherlands we have tried to identify the ACHD patients at high risk, based on “expert opinion”. This is important because in the beginning all cardiac patients were identified as high-risk, but this seems not realistic as we see that especially elderly patients, patients with overweight and those with pulmonary problems have devastating outcomes. By identifying high-risk groups, we can now reassure many congenital patients and explain that their risk is probably not much higher than that of the normal population. 

We have formulated and communicated the following groups of high-risk to our national institutes of cardiology:

• Fontan patients
• Other univentricular heart patients
• Cyanotic patients
• Patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension
• Patients with diminished ventricular function needing medication

This selection is not discussed in our nucleus yet and therefore can not be seen as an official advice, but I just wanted to share our Dutch consensus.

I wish you all good health for yourself, your families and friends and of course for your patients.

Jolien Roos-Hesselink

Chairperson WG Adult Congenital Heart Disease

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