Severe congenital heart disease links to earlier multimorbidity

In a longitudinal cohort of 137,492 individuals with congenital heart disease in Quebec followed over 35 years, researchers tracked 38 diagnostic comorbidities across the lifespan. The study compared 9,764 patients with severe congenital heart disease to 127,728 individuals with nonsevere disease.

Patients with severe congenital heart disease displayed higher cumulative probabilities of comorbidities from birth to older adulthood. By age 40, cumulative probabilities for developing cardiac, vascular, endocrine/metabolic, digestive, infectious, renal, and neurological diseases were at least two-fold higher in severe compared to nonsevere cases. Median onset for most comorbidities occurred below age 40 in severe cases, two to three decades earlier than in nonsevere cases. Disease progression in severe disease began with childhood cardiovascular conditions, progressed to early-adulthood metabolic, hepatic, and renal diseases, and later culminated in heart failure and dementia.