Why do so many children born with heart defects have trouble in school?

(University of Utah Health Sciences) As advances in medicine are giving rise to growing numbers of children who survive severe heart defects, it's emerging that over half have behavioral problems and difficulty keeping up academically. The University of Utah School of Medicine was awarded $6.4 million from the National Institutes of Health to identify causes of these disabilities, searching for genetic lesions that affect both the heart and brain. The goal is to be able to predict patient outcom