The goal was to randomly select 500 patients from the
database of the Congenital Heart Section, Children’s
Clinic, Rikshospitalet University Hospital, Oslo,
Norway. The database consists of approximately 8,000
children under the age of 16. The search criteria entered
in the automated search engine were equal
amount of boys and girls and even distribution of
simple and complex heart defects. The result of the
search was 488 patients with various heart defects.
Excluded were 58 patients: 6 who were dead, 8 who
had serious mental disorders, 11 who could not
communicate in Norwegian, 13 who were without an
effective address and 20 parents giving as their main
reason that the children were completely asymptomatic
and no longer underwent control routines. A total
of 112 patients and parents did not want to participate
with no explanation or did not respond. The ethical
committee standards prevented a further follow-up of
the non responders after one reminder.