Emphasizes the need for pediatricians to actively screen for and manage cardiac involvement in children with muscular dystrophy, even when subclinical.
May support routine cardiac screening in pediatric muscular dystrophy; leaves open optimal protocols and outcome impact pending prospective data.
Pediatricians and other healthcare professionals need to be alert to the presence and progression of cardiac involvement in patients with MD. The signs and symptoms of cardiac involvement may be minimal, necessitating careful interval history, physical examination, and noninvasive cardiac testing. Available treatment strategies may reduce disease morbidity and mortality. It is reasonable to expect that a child who has skeletal muscle weakness from MD may have cardiac involvement, even if it is subclinical. Treatment of the muscular dystrophies through genetic engineering is a future dream. However, the improvements in clinical care, evaluation and treatment standards, and multidisciplinary supportive care are able to benefit the current generation of children.
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Markham et al. (2005) studied this question.
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