Letter by Winter et al Regarding Article, 'Children and Adults With Congenital Heart Disease Lost to Follow-Up: Who and When?'

To the Editor: In their recent article, Mackie et al1 demonstrated that 61% of adult patients with congenital heart disease (CHD) in Quebec, Canada, fail to receive cardiac follow-up. In the Netherlands, we found that only one third (≈8000) of adult patients with CHD fail to receive cardiac follow-up. Therefore, caution with extrapolating these data to other nations is recommended. On average, 200 000 children are born in the Netherlands each year. With a birth prevalence of around 8 per 1000 live births2 and an overall survival rate until adulthood of 85% since the early 1970s, there are an estimated 25 …