You may know I’m a keen Arsenal fan, so whenever a story crops up involving the club I tend to take a look, and so it was this week with former Gunners mid-fielder Jack Wilshere. He is a British Heart Foundation ambassador, having been on a long journey with his young daughter who had surgery to repair a hole in her heart. As sad as these stories are sometimes, having a high profile person championing a worthy cause is often an upside in terms of increasing awareness of such problems. Happily in Jack’s daughter Siena’s case, she was a ‘warrior’ and has done really well.
The term we use to describe a heart problem from birth is ‘congenital heart defects’ and there are a great many of them; too many to go through in detail and many are not very relevant to the average reader. I thought it would be worth however covering some of the basics, which are common enough that you might know someone, or have heard of someone, who has one. Overall, 1% of babies in the UK are born with some form of congenital heart defect. Many years ago these conditions could be fatal, but thankfully now can often be corrected in some way.
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