Congenital Heart Disease in Mexico Advances of the Regionalization Project

AbstractConsistent with the mission of the World Society for Pediatric and Congenital Heart Surgery to promote health care for childrenwith congenital heart disease all around the world, a Mexican Association of Specialists in Congenital Heart Disease (abbreviatedin Spanish as AMECC) was created in Mexico in 2008. Our efforts were coordinated with those of the National Health Secretarywith the objective being implementation of a national plan for regionalization of care for patients with congenital heart disease. Toimprove our knowledge related to technologic and human resources for management of congenital heart disease, we developed anational survey. Finally, a national database was created for collecting all Mexican centers’ information related to congenital heartdisease care in order to quantify the advances related to the proposed plans. The database utilized international consensusnomenclature. Theaimofthis article istoshow thesequence ofouractions inrelation todirect accomplishments andthe currentstatus ofcongenital heart disease care in Mexico. This article emphasizes the main aspects of these actions: regionalization projectimplementation, national survey results, and cardiovascular pediatric surgical database creation. Knowledge of outcomes relatedto successful actions would be useful for those countries that face similar challenges and may lead them to consider adoption ofsimilar measures with the respective adjustments to their own reality.Keywordscongenital heart disease, congenital heart surgery, database, health policy