Expert Care Is Crucial
If someone in your family has a genetic heart condition or has experienced sudden cardiac death, it’s important to test children and relatives early in life to help identify if any family members are at risk. In cases where there is no known family history, your child’s pediatrician or a pediatric cardiologist may detect genetic heart disease upon hearing a heart murmur or an irregular heartbeat or learning your child has experienced unexplained fainting, dizziness, heart palpitations, trouble breathing, chest pain, or weight loss.
True genetic heart disease is rare and can be challenging to diagnose, so it’s important to be evaluated by a true expert. Because genetic heart conditions sometimes affect more than one person in a family, it’s vital that your child gets the right testing and that a team of experts helps your family understand and act on test results. At Duke, we offer highly specialized genetic testing to identify a range of inherited heart disorders, including:
- Arrhythmias: long QT syndrome, short QT syndrome, Brugada syndrome, catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia, and idiopathic ventricular fibrillation
- Cardiomyopathies: hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy, left ventricular non-compaction, dilated cardiomyopathy, and restrictive cardiomyopathy
- Connective tissue disorders: Loeys-Dietz and Marfan syndromes
- Malformations of the heart and other congenital heart defects: hypoplastic left heart syndrome, bicuspid aortic valve, tricuspid atresia, atrial or ventricular septal defects, and more
- Sudden unexplained deaths of seemingly healthy children without an identifiable cause