Surgical Outcomes in Pediatric Patients With Coarctation and VSD

Recently, a paper was published that compared outcomes of patients requiring repair of aortic coarctation and ventricular septal defect. Some surgeons opt to repair both defects in one surgery while other surgeons do the repair in two separate operations. Recently at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, we have adopted the practice of correcting both defects during the same operation but through two separate incisions (one on the chest and the other through the ribs on the side. This reduces the amount of time the patient is on the heart-lung bypass machine during surgery. This study is a review of patient charts to compare outcomes of patients who have had surgery to repair their coarctation and VSD during 2002 through 2005.