Zeitschrift für Kardiologie
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Hypocalcemia is a relatively uncommon reversible cause of congestive heart failure. There are a few reports of hypocalcemic children who developed congestive heart failure associated with hypoparathyroidism. In all these patients, however, cardiac failure did not occur before the age of nine years. ⋯ The successful treatment following normalization of serum calcium level proved the superiority of hypocalcemia over mitral valve insufficiency in the etiology of the cardiac failure. To our knowledge, this is the first report of congestive heart failure due to hypocalcemia as the first manifestation of hypoparathyroidism in childhood. Hypocalcemia should be kept in mind in any congestive heart failure in children with or without underlying cardiac malformation.