title: Cardiac surgery in grown-up congenital heart patients. Will the surgical workload increase?
abstract: The number of patients with grown-up congenital heart (GUCH) disease is steadily increasing. Although there is agreement that the medical service for GUCH patients should be expanded in coming years, it is still unknown whether this should also include the surgical service. In an attempt to elucidate this we reviewed our population of surgical GUCH patients (n=225) operated in our institution from 1998 to 2005. The patients' charts were reviewed. For details of the procedures, the hospital's internal database (PATS) was used. Patients were stratified according to diagnosis and complexity of the surgical procedures in a simple, moderate and complex category group. The yearly number of operations remained stable in the period. However, whereas the size of the simple complexity group was reduced in the study period, the size of both the moderate and the complex category groups increased progressively. Forty-four percent of the surgical procedures were reoperations. Morbidity and mortality (1.3%) were low. The present study suggests that the future surgical GUCH patients will be increasingly complex. However, it is speculative whether the total number of surgical GUCH patients will increase. This is especially explained by the continuous introduction of new percutaneous catheter techniques.
authors.affiliation: Department of Cardiac Surgery, The Heart Centre, Rigshospitalet 2152, Blegdamsvej 9, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark.
authors.forename: Jakob
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Klcovansky
authors.forename: Lars
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Søndergaard
authors.forename: Morten
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Helvind
authors.forename: Henrik Ørbaek
authors.initials: HØ
authors.lastname: Andersen
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D006348:Cardiac Surgical Procedures / Q000706:statistics & numerical data* / Q000639:trends; D003718:Denmark / Q000453:epidemiology; D005260:Female; D006330:Heart Defects, Congenital / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000601:surgery*; D006801:Humans; D007902:Length of Stay / Q000639:trends; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009017:Morbidity / Q000639:trends; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012189:Retrospective Studies