Evaluation of surgical treatment of congenital heart disease in patients aged above 16 years.

BACKGROUND The increasing number of children with evolving congenital heart diseases demands greater preparation of professionals and institutions that handle them. OBJECTIVE To describe the profile of patients aged over 16 years with congenital heart disease, who have undergone surgery, and analyze the risk factors that predict hospital mortality. METHOD One thousand five hundred twenty patients (mean age 27 ± 13 years) were operated between January 1986 and December 2010. We performed a descriptive analysis of the epidemiological profile of the study population and analyzed risk factors for hospital mortality, considering the complexity score, the year in which surgery was performed, the procedure performed or not performed by the pediatric surgeon and reoperation. RESULTS There was a significant increase in the number of cases from the year 2000. The average complexity score was 5.4 and the septal defects represented 45% of cases. Overall mortality was 7.7% and most procedures (973 or 61.9%) with greater complexity were performed by pediatric surgeons. Complexity (OR 1.5), reoperation (OR 2.17) and pediatric surgeon (OR 0.28) were independent risk factors influencing mortality. Multivariate analysis showed that the year in which the surgery was performed (OR 1.03), the complexity (OR 1.44) and the pediatric surgeon (OR 0.28) influenced the result. CONCLUSION There is an increasing number of patients aged 16 years which, despite the large number of simple cases, the most complex ones were referred to pediatric surgeons, who had lower mortality, especially in recent years.