Adult Congenital Cardiac Care

The Adult Congenital Heart Association (ACHA) is dedicated to supporting patients with congenital heart disease. To guide patients to qualified providers and programs, it maintains a publicly accessible directory of dedicated adult congenital cardiac programs. We analyzed the directory in 2006 and 2015, aiming to evaluate the growth of the directory as a whole and to evaluate the growth of individual programs within the directory. We also hope this raises awareness of the growing opportunities that exist in adult congenital cardiology and cardiac surgery.

Data in the directory are self-reported. Only data from US programs were collected and analyzed.

By the end of 2015, compared to 2006, there were more programs reporting to the directory in more states (107 programs across 42 states vs 57 programs across 33 states), with higher overall clinical volume (591 vs 164 half-day clinics per week, 96,611 vs 34,446 patient visits). On average, each program was busier (5 vs 2 half-day clinics per week per program). Over the time period, the number of reported annual operations performed nearly doubled (4,346 operations by 210 surgeons vs 2,461 operations by 125 surgeons). Access to ancillary services including specific clinical diagnostic and therapeutic services also expanded.

Between 2006 and 2015, the clinical directory and the individual programs have grown. Current directory data may provide benchmarks for staffing and services for newly emerging and existing programs. Verifying the accuracy of the information and inclusion of all programs will be important in the future.