Editorial - February 2021

Dear members of the Working Group on Adult Congenital Heart Disease,

The SARS-Cov2 pandemic continues with devastating consequences. Our Working Group has recently released a Position Paper aiming to discuss the broad impact of COVID-19 on patients with ACHD, focusing specifically on pathophysiology, risk stratification for work, self-isolation, hospitalization, impact on pregnancy, psychosocial health, and longer-term implications for the provision of ACHD care. Hopefully, the vaccination strategies already developed all over the globe will turn 2021 into the year of the recovery from the pandemic. Against the misinformation broadly available in the media, our patients need to be well informed by health care providers about the importance of vaccination.

The Position Paper from the EACVI and the ESC WG on ACHD on imaging the adults with simple shunt lesions has also been recently published. In 2018, the position paper “Imaging the adult with congenital heart disease: a multimodality imaging approach” was published. Because of the length of the document, simple lesions were not touched on. The current paper focuses on atrial septal defect, ventricular septal defect and persistent arterial duct. The document is prepared for general cardiologists, trainees, medical students,
imagers/technicians to select the most appropriate imaging modality in the pre-, intra- and post-procedural settings.

Finally, we would like to strongly encourage all the ACHD community to present your research at the upcoming EuroGUCH 2021. The abstract submission deadline has been extended to 19 February. We are looking forward to receiving your valuable work in the field.

I wish you all good health and best regards,

Laura Dos.
Communication Coordinator of the ACHD Working Group.