Congenital heart disease: addressing the need for novel lower-risk percutaneous interventional strategies

With the advent of improved neonatal care, increasingly vulnerable higher-risk patients with complex congenital heart anomalies are presenting for intervention. This group of patients will always have a higher risk of an adverse event during a procedure but by recognizing this risk and with the introduction of risk scoring systems and thus the development of novel lower risk procedures, the rate of adverse events can be reduced.

This article reviews risk scoring systems for congenital catheterization and demonstrates how they can be used to reduce the rate of adverse events. Then, novel low risk strategies are discussed for low-weight infants e.g. patent ductus arteriosus (PDA) stent insertion; premature infants e.g. PDA device closure; and transcatheter pulmonary valve replacement. Finally, how risk is assessed and managed within the inherent bias of an institution is discussed.

There has been a remarkable improvement in the rate of adverse events in congenital cardiac interventions, but now, as the benchmark of mortality rate is switched to morbidity and quality of life, continued innovation into lower risk strategies and understanding the inherent bias when assessing risk will be key to continuing this improvement.