Surgical repair of ventricular septal defect without ventriculotomy in the first 12 months of life

Sixty-eight infants with clinical evidence of a large ventricular septal defect (VSD), refractory to conventional medical treatment, underwent surgical closure within the first 12 months of life from August 1987 to June 1991. There were 43 males and 25 females. The ages of the patients ranged from two to 12 months, with a mean age of 6.6 months. The mean body weight of the patients was 5.4 kg (range, 2.3-10 kg). Surgery was performed because of intractable heart failure in 27 infants (39.7%), failure to thrive in 40 (58.8%), repeated pneumonia in 43 (63.2%) and prolonged endotracheal intubation in nine (13.2%). There were 21 patients with a supracristal VSD (30.9%) and 47 patients with perimembranous VSD (69.1%). Nine patients (13.2%) had preoperative cardiac catheterization. Transatrial repair of perimembranous VSDs and transpulmonary repair of supracristal VSDs was used exclusively without ventriculotomy. Surgically induced heart blocks did not occur in any of the patients. Only two patients (2.9%) died during the early postoperative period. Diagnosis in most cases was confirmed by the present advanced integrated color Doppler echocardiographic technology which is widely used by pediatric cardiologists. There was no need to perform cardiac catheterization in most patients with VSDs. The morbidity and mortality were very low. We strongly suggest that for infants with a large VSD, primary repair should be the procedure of choice.