Complicações pulmonares em crianças submetidas à cirurgia cardíaca em um hospital universitárioPulmonary complications in pediatric cardiac surgery at a university hospital Federal Abstract Objective: To identify the prevalence of pulmonary complications in children subjected to cardiac surgery, as well as demographic and clinical characteristics of the studied population.Methods: The sample comprised 37 children of both genders, subjected to cardiac surgery at the Hospital Universitário Presidente Dutra, São Luis (MA), during the year of 2007. Patients who had pre-operative pulmonary disease, patients with neurological disorders, intra-operative death besides lack of data in medical records were not included. The data were obtained from data collection of medical and nursing developments of the respective medical records.Results: The population of the study was predominantly composed by female children, from the countryside and at school age. Pathologies considered as low risk were the majority, highlighting the patent ductus arteriosus, ventricular septal defect and interatrial septal defect. It was observed that most children used cardiopulmonary bypass for over 30 minutes, with a median of 80 minutes, suffered a median sternotomy, using only the mediastinal drain and made use of postoperative mechanical ventilation, with the median of about 6.6 hours. Only 8.1%, in other words, three patients developed pulmonary complications, and of those, two died.Conclusion: Most of the sample children was female, school aged and from the countryside. The low time of cardiopulmonary bypass and mechanical ventilation, in addition to congenital heart diseases with low risk, may have been factors that contributed to the low rate of postoperative pulmonary complications.Descriptors: Congenital Heart Diseases. Surgery. Postoperative Complications.