Around 200 leading experts specialising in congenital and structural heart diseases are gathering in Ho Chi Minh City for an international conference on right-sided heart intervention from A to Z from January 14-16.

They are to share new discoveries as well as experience in treating congenital heart defects.

Cardiac interventional procedures performed in the Medicine University and Children’s Hospital 1 of Ho Chi Minh City and Thailand’s Queen Sirikit Institute of Children Health will be shown at the conference.

In Vietnam, at least 8,000 out of 1 million babies born a year suffer from congenital heart diseases, with half of them having right-sided heart defects, mostly Tetralogy of Fallot.

Asian people, including Vietnamese, tend to have right-sided heart diseases, according to Associate Professor Vu Minh Phuc, Chairman of the HCM City Paediatric Cardiology and Congenital Heart Disease Society.

Progress has been made in curing those diseases, Phuc said, noting that operations can now be performed on newborn babies.

Vietnam currently has 19 centres capable of performing heart operations and ten of which are located in HCM City.

Children’s Hospitals No. 1 and No. 2 conduct operations for more than 400 patients with right –sided heart defects a year.

The conference is a follow-up of the three previous successful conferences in Vietnam, including “Eardrum Perforation from A to Z”, “V entricular Septal Defect from A to Z” and “Coronary Intervention from A to Z”.-VNA