Achievements in Congenital Heart Defect Surgery

Background— This article presents an update of the results achieved by modern surgery in congenital heart defects (CHDs) over the past 40 years regarding survival and the need for reoperations, especially focusing on the results from the past 2 decades. Methods and Results— From 1971 to 2011, all 7038 patients P P =0.003), and 5-year cumulative survival was 88.8% versus 95.0% ( P =0.0003). In simple versus complex defects, 434 (11.6%) versus 985 (33.8%) patients needed at least 1 reoperation before 16 years of age. In complex defects, 5-year cumulative freedom of reoperation among patients operated on in 1990 to 1999 versus 2000 to 2011 was 66% versus 73% ( P =0.0001). Conclusions— Highly significant, sequential improvements in survival and reductions in reoperations after CHD surgery were seen. A future challenge is to find methods to reduce the need for reoperations and further reduce long-term mortality.