Cardiology in the young
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Cardiology in the young · Mar 2020
Advance care planning and palliative care in ACHD: the healthcare providers' perspective.
Advance care planning and palliative care are gaining recognition as critical care components for adults with CHD, yet these often do not occur. Study objectives were to evaluate ACHD providers' 1) comfort managing patients' physical symptoms and psychosocial needs and 2) perspectives on the decision/timing of advance care planning initiation and palliative care referral. ⋯ Providers noted high value in advance directives yet were themselves less likely to initiate advance care planning or refer to palliative care. This raises the critical questions of when, how, and by whom discussion of these important matters should be initiated and how best to support ACHD providers in these endeavours.
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Cardiology in the young · Mar 2020
The quality, understandability, readability, and popularity of online educational materials for heart murmur.
Murmurs are abnormal audible heart sounds produced by turbulent blood flow. Therefore, murmurs in a child may be a source of anxiety for family members. Families often use online materials to explore possible reasons for these murmurs, given the accessibility of information on the Internet. In this study, we evaluated the quality, understandability, readability, and popularity of online materials about heart murmur. ⋯ We demonstrated that web pages describing heart murmurs were understandable and high quality. However, the readability level of the websites was above the recommended sixth-grade reading level. Readability of written materials from online sources need to be improved. However, care must be taken to ensure that the information of web pages is of a high quality and understandable.