ABSTRACT
A total of 1,408 adult congenital heart disease patients (age over 13 years) underwent surgery between 1979 and 1995 at Siriraj Hospital, contributing 33.75 percent to the overall number of congenital heart disease cases (4,172) who underwent surgery in that period. This finding is similar to statistics in the West. The ages ranged from 13.3 years to 72 years, with a mean of 24.06 years. The oldest patient was a 72 year-old man with coronary cardiac chamber fistula. The most common diagnoses in descending order were: atrial septal defect (41.05 per cent), patent ductus arteriosus (16.19 per cent), tetralogy of Fallot (14.06 per cent) and ventricular septal defect (10.87 per cent). These four categories covered 82 percent of the cases. The overall surgical mortality was 1.78 per cent, compared with 3 per cent in patients who had undergone surgery during childhood. Only patients with double outlet of the right ventricle and congenital aortic stenosis, or left ventricular outflow tract obstruction, showed increased risk of death (20 per cent), compared with 5.77 per cent in those cases who had undergone surgery during childhood. The conclusions drawn from the study are that surgical treatment for adult congenital heart diseases showed a low average of surgical mortality of less than 2 per cent in almost every category except double outlet of the fight ventricle and congenital aortic stenosis, for which early surgery is recommend.