Surgery for congenital heart disease in Europe 1995

Abstract

The total of nearly 28,000 operations in 1995 is probably an underestimate, but it has been difficult to collect this data at all. Obviously many smaller countries have not been included, and some older patients undergoing operations such as atrial septal defect closure in adult units have been missed. The number of open heart operations per million vary in different countries and this presumably represents differing referral patterns. If their numbers are low in some countries, these results may be helpful in persuading their governments that more resources are needed for congenital heart surgery. It is also interesting to see the variation in the number of operations performed in the first year of life. Those countries with a lower rate may have a backlog of older patients who were previously palliated, or their surgeons may still prefer initial palliation and later correction in some conditions rather than early correction. It is hoped that with better prospective data collection, an assessment can be repeated in 2000.

Malnutrition in Belgian children with congenital heart disease on admission to hospital

“…In 1995 a total of 709 operations were performed for congenital heart disease; 319 of these were on neonates and infants. These Belgian data reflect the global European trend for early surgical intervention and early correction of congenital heart defects ( Monro, 1998).…”

Congenital Heart Disease in Mexico

“…In addition, RENACCAPE was structured on the basis of internationally accepted nomenclature for diagnoses, procedures, and complications in cardiovascular surgery, 8,9,[25][26][27][28][29] so it can also be used for multicenter studies with any world health center that follows the same data codification system. [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42] Currently, there are 11 hospital centers registered in RENACCAPE, all of them providing information from the second 2011 semester on, and we propose to realize a national statistical analysis once we reach the first year of data compilation. (d) Barriers to accurate and complete data collection.…”

The next challenge?adapting to change

“…We certainly do not know how many operations a year they do, let alone the results. Some years ago I collected data from 20 European countries regarding the number of paediatric cardiac operations performed [15]. Few countries had a national register and I eventually mostly relied on information gathered by one surgeon in each country.…”