Golden: Every middle school aged child should be screened for heart issues

I was born with tetralogy of Fallot, one of the most common congenital heart defects. In 1965, when I was 5 years old, I had my first corrective surgery. My parents were told I had a 50/50 chance of surviving. I did. Nowadays, they do this surgery on newborns, and it is fairly routine. My surgery was considered somewhat primitive back then, and I developed some cardiac arrhythmias later in life; my doctors said they likely came about from scar tissue from my earlier surgery.