STRUCTURAL AND FUNCTIONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE HEART IN SCHOOLCHILDREN LIVING IN THE NORTH WITH CONTROLLED BRONCHIAL ASTHMA
Bronchial asthma (BA) is one of the most common child pathologies in the European North of Russia. Up to date, the cardiovascular system of children with this disease has been poorly investigated, even though it has a close functional relationship with lungs. Patients with mild BA constitute the largest proportion of its incidence and at the same time they are the least examined group. This article studies heart characteristics of schoolchildren living in the north and suffering from BA. The data were obtained using transthoracic echocardiography, taking into account the development stage of the cardiovascular system of each child. We studied the structural and functional parameters of the hearts of children aged 7-17 years born and living in the city of Arkhangelsk. The main group included 148 children with controlled BA (mild, during remission); the control group was comprised of 491 healthy children. We found that the most sensitive to BA factors was the cardiovascular system of boys aged 7-9 years and girls aged 10-13 years with this condition. It is in these groups of children that the largest number of changes in the structural and functional cardiac parameters was observed. It should be noted that the duration of BA between the age groups of boys and girls under study was not significantly different. What is more, neither of the groups showed any signs of pulmonary hypertension, which was determined using transtricuspid regurgitation.