Background: Congenital heart diseases cause significant childhood morbidity and mortality. Several restricted studies have been conducted on the epidemiology in Nigeria. No truly nationwide data on patterns of congenital heart disease exists.
Objectives: To determine the patterns of congenital heart disease in children in Nigeria and examine trends in the occurrence of individual defects across 5 decades.
Method: We searched PubMed database, Google scholar, TRIP database, World Health Organisation libraries and reference lists of selected articles for studies on patterns of congenital heart disease among children in Nigeria between 1964 and 2015. Two researchers reviewed the papers independently and extracted the data. Seventeen studies were selected that included 2,953 children with congenital heart disease.
Results: The commonest congenital heart diseases in Nigeria are ventricular septal defect (40.6%), patent ductus arteriosus (18.4%), atrial septal defect (11.3%) and tetralogy of Fallot (11.8%). There has been a 6% increase in the burden of VSD in every decade for the 5 decades studied and a decline in the occurrence of pulmonary stenosis. Studies conducted in Northern Nigeria demonstrated higher proportions of atrial septal defects than patent ductus arteriosus.
Conclusions: Ventricular septal defects are the commonest congenital heart diseases in Nigeria with a rising burden.
Keywords: Heart disease; Nigeria; congenital; epidemiology; patterns; trends.