Radiation risk from pediatric cardiac catheterization: friendly fire on children with congenital heart disease.

Congenital heart disease (CHD) is the most prevalent and fatal of all birth defects, occurring in nearly 1 in 100 live births.1 Before the advent of cardiac surgery for congenital cardiac malformations, less than one fifth of children born with such lesions reached adulthood. The progress of surgical management and, more recently, interventional catheterization has allowed an increasing number of congenital heart defects to be corrected surgically so that an increasing number of patients reach adolescence and adult life, even those with complex defects.2,3