? ? Heart failure (HF) in the young is a common clinical entity that has significant morbidity and mortality and carries substantial long-term social and financial costs. The leading cause is congenital heart disease, which is the most common birth defect with an incidence of almost 1%. It is also the 5th ranked cause of years of potential life lost at 2 per 1000 population. Well over 450,000 children and over 1 million adults in the USA have a congenital heart defect emphasizing its impact on public health. In addition, inherited cardiomyopathies, and acquired heart disease, such as myocarditis, contribute to the overall burden of HF in the young. Despite the importance of HF in young adults, children and infants, it has been less well studied when compared with the rich literature and basic understanding of HF in adults. As a result, therapy for children with HF has advanced more slowly. Indeed, most new concepts for management of HF in children today are based on translation of adult treatment strategies with little preclinical evidence supporting their use in the young. However, recent and exciting discoveries in the molecular regulation of cardiac morphogenesis, as well as in the cellular and molecular response of the heart to injury, have provided new tools to understand HF in the young. The goal of this 3 day conference is to present current clinical and basic research on the basis of HF in children, and map out future directions in heart failure research for this underserved population. The conference will be kept relatively small (~150 participants) in order to maintain a high quality of interaction between participants, and to remain focused on the scientific basis of HF in children. The venue for this meeting, Estes Park, Colorado, is chosen to enhance these interactions in an informal setting, and is planned for the Fall of 2007. Five broad areas of research will be presented across the 2.5 days of the meeting: 1) Basic mechanisms of HF in the young. 2) Basic and novel tools for quantifying HF. 3) Novel therapies for HF. 4) Clinical science of HF in the young. 5). Adult congenital heart disease. This conference has 4 goals: 1) Increased attention to the need for clinical and basic research on HF in the young. 2) Increased collaborations between basic and clinical researchers to focus on HF in the young. 3) Improved clinical understanding of the basis for HF and its treatment in children and young adults. 4) Increased understanding of novel concepts and new ideas for understanding HF and it's treatment in the young. Given the different etiologies of HF in the young, our rapidly advancing knowledge of gene programs directing cardiac embryology and contractile function, and the rapidly growing population of children surviving surgery who now have a high risk of late onset HF, there is an urgent need to understand HF in the young in order to design new treatment strategies and rationally apply current therapies. ? ? ?
