AKRON, Ohio — When it comes to matters of the heart for children, growing up doesn’t necessarily mean a patient outgrows the need for specialized medical care.

National guidelines recommend about half the adult survivors of complex congenital heart disease receive lifelong care from a physician who specializes in heart defects that were present at birth. However, a study recently published in the national professional journal Pediatrics found many parents don’t realize the need for their children to get ongoing care from a specialist into adulthood.

Akron Children’s Hospital was among nine pediatric cardiology centers nationwide that participated in the study, led by Children’s Hospital Boston.

The researchers surveyed parents of patients with complex heart problems — the type in which lifelong care would be recommended. Although the majority realized their child would need lifelong care, less than half (44 percent) thought the care should be provided by a cardiologist specially trained to treat adults with congenital heart defects.

Thanks to medical advances, children born with complex heart defects that would have been fatal decades ago are surviving into adulthood, said Kathy Ackerman, nurse manager for the Heart Center at Akron Children’s Hospital and one of the study authors. An estimated 1 million adults are living with congenital heart defects nationwide.

"Adult cardiologists would know how to fix a heart that was in bad shape because you ate too much, didn’t exercise and smoked all your life," Ackerman said. "Those are acquired things."

However, she said, adult survivors of congenital heart disease can face unique problems and needs because of their condition and the surgery they underwent years earlier.

"It’s so important that the message gets out and people get the care they need," she said.

As an adult survivor of a congenital heart defect, Denise Edington of Doylestown, Ohio, knew the importance of continuing specialized care for her son, Scott, who was born with a complex heart problem 23 years ago.

Her son has had two heart operations and continues to be seen regularly by a congenital heart specialist at Akron Children’s Hospital.

"The great thing is that there are now ways that these children can survive," she said. "They just need to have follow-up care that is appropriate. It is crucial to have that education."

In fact, she said, he thinks the care is so important that he’s in his second year of medical school at the University of Toledo. His plan: to become a cardiologist who specializes in congenital issues.

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YAHOO REVEALS TOP SEARCHES

Great expectations apparently are on the minds of many online users.

Pregnancy symptoms were the most-searched health symptoms for 2011, according to a new release from search engine Yahoo.

Rounding out the top 10 most commonly searched health symptoms this year are: No. 2 diabetes, No. 3 gall bladder, No. 4 gout, No. 5 thyroid, No. 6 lupus, No. 7. shingles, No. 8 depression, No. 9 herpes and No. 10 menopause.

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1 IN 10 ‘SEXTING’

As many as 9.6 percent of preteens and teens acknowledge they have sent sexually suggestive images on their cell phones or over the Internet, according to a study published in the January edition of Pediatrics.

A total of 1,560 youth ages 10 through 17 were surveyed for the study, which found 2.5 percent have shared sexually explicit images of themselves or other minors. The incidence of "sexting" was almost 10 percent when the definition was expanded to include sexually suggestive images.

Most of the kids who admitted sexting said it was done as a prank or while in a relationship. About 31 percent said alcohol or drug use was involved.