Paper
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
599
Health Care Transition in Adolescents with Congenital Heart Disease
Desiree Fleck, MSN, CRNP, CCRN, Philadelphia Adult Congenital Heart Center, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Congenital heart disease is the number one congenital birth defect in neonates today, with a prevalence of 10%. As a result of improvements in medical and surgical therapies, persons with congenital heart disease are living well into adulthood. Approximately one million child survivors of congenital heart disease live in the United States alone. Health care transition in adolescents and young adults with congenital heart disease is of growing importance in understanding the experience of adolescents and young adults living with this multi-varied chronic illness. To date, there is no published state of the science paper about health care transition pertaining to adolescents and young adults with congenital heart disease. The purpose of this presentaion is to present an integrative review of the literature for the purposes of constructing a state of the science from the literature on transition of adolescents and young adults with congenital heart disease.