The cases of 110 infants less than 1 year of age, who had surgical repair for coarctation of the aorta between June 1974 and February 1988, were analysed. Three groups of patients were identified. In group 1 there were 39 patients with isolated coarctation. In group 2 there were 25 infants with additional ventricular septal defects (VSD), while in group 3 there were 46 infants with other associated congenital cardiac defects. Repair was performed using the subclavian flap aortoplasty (SFA) procedure in 83 patients, resection with end-to-end anastomosis (EEA) in 23, patch aortoplasty in 3 and Goretex tube bypass in 1. Twenty-eight patients had simultaneous pulmonary artery banding and one concomitant closure of the VSD. The overall early mortality rate was 8.2% (5.1% in group 1, 0% in group 2, and 15.2% in group 3). Age at operation (under 1 month, p = 0.04) and other associated cardiac anomalies (p = 0.03) increased early mortality significantly. There were 11 late deaths (10.8%) among 101 patients followed from 1 to 15 years (mean 5.3 years). Twelve patients underwent further surgery for recoarctation, eight of them within 11 months. A further 11 patients currently have a Doppler gradient across their coarctation site of more than 20 mmHg, but have not undergone further surgery to the coarctation repair site.
One hundred reoperations were performed on 93 patients of a total of 2287 patients who underwent initial coronary artery bypass surgery (CABG) between September 1972 and August 1988. The mean age of the 84 males and 9 females was 55.5 years (range 31-75 years). All patients prior to reoperation had severe angina and were judged to be in NYHA class III or class IV. Late graft failure alone or in combination with progressive atherosclerosis accounted for more than 60% of the cases requiring reoperation. The early mortality for reoperation was 1% compared with 1.4% for initial CABG. Perioperative myocardial infarction was recorded as a complication in 3.2% of cases at initial operation compared with 1% at reoperation. Symptomatic improvement occurred in 89.1% of cases after reoperation and almost 60% became entirely asymptomatic (mean follow-up interval 17 months).
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