Twenty-Seven-Year Institutional Experience With Surgery for Adults With Congenital Heart Disease

Given improved contemporary survival of adults with congenital heart disease (ACHD), we aimed to evaluate trends in ACHD surgery and outcomes at a single center over a 27-year period.

Surgical databases were retrospectively queried for patients >18 years old who underwent ACHD surgery between January 1, 1994, and December 31, 2020. A total of 2,195 included patients underwent 2,425 cardiac surgical procedures within the specified time frame. Patients were grouped by era: I, 1994-2000; 2, 2001-2010; and 3, 2011-2020. Trends in primary cardiac diagnosis and surgical management were evaluated.

The median age increased across the eras. The most common primary cardiac diagnoses (n = 2,425) overall were left ventricular outflow tract anomalies (n = 2,019, 83%), atrial septal defect (n = 407, 17%), right ventricular outflow tract anomalies (n = 360, 15%), and ventricular septal defect (n = 110, 4.5%). The most commonly observed procedures overall were operations on the left ventricular outflow tract (n = 1,633, 67%), aorta (n = 675, 28%), coronary arteries (n = 449, 19%), right ventricular outflow tract (n = 323, 13%), and atrial septal defect (n = 264, 11%). Major complications occurred in 10% of cases, and 58 patients died within 30 days of their operation yielding an operative mortality of 2.4%.

To our knowledge, this is the largest single center report on surgery for adults with congenital heart disease. Surgery for ACHD has been performed at our center with relatively low morbidity and mortality over the last few decades.