Seventeen years of adult congenital heart surgery: a single centre experience

Abstract

Objective: With a growing number of children with congenital heart disease (CHD) reaching adulthood, an extensive experience with cardiac surgery in adults with CHD is accumulating. To increase insight in this patient category we report our 17-year single centre experience including predictors for adverse outcome and EuroSCORE performance.

Methods: Patients and operative characteristics of all consecutive adult CHD patients operated upon between January 1990 and January 2007 were collected. Categorisation was done according to the EACTS/STS congenital database. Early and late morbidity and mortality were assessed with follow-up extending up to 17 years. EuroSCORE performance was assessed.

Results: Nine hundred and sixty-three procedures were performed in 830 patients (mean age 39.3 years, 50.3% male). A total of 49% were re-do procedures, frequent procedures were for left heart lesions (37%), right heart lesions (31%) and septal defects (8%). The 51% primary procedures largely consisted of less complex procedures but also included 1.4% of tetralogy of Fallot repairs, 4.1% of aortic coarctation repairs and 2.7% of Ebstein's disease repairs. Thirty-day mortality was 1.5% (n=14); predicted mortality by logistic EuroSCORE was 4.6%. c-index was 0.61 (95% CI 0.46-0.75). Major complications such as tamponade requiring intervention occurred in 3.2%, postoperative bleeding requiring re-exploration in 7.1% and renal insufficiency requiring dialysis in 4 (0.4%). Pulmonary hypertension was a strong predictor for short-term mortality; impaired ventricular function and cyanosis for long-term mortality. Overall 17-year survival was 71% (95% CI 61%-82%). Eighty percent of patients were in NYHA class I at last follow-up, 17% in II, 3% in III, 0% in IV.

Conclusions: Surgery in adult CHD patients can be performed with low operative mortality and good clinical outcome. EuroSCORE is not a good model for risk assessment in this group of patients.