Abstract
Surgery for congenital heart defects in adults is a progressively expanding subspeciality. Reoperations are associated with a higher perioperative risk, particularly because of pericardial adhesions after previous surgeries.
In the Motol University Hospital, there is a comprehensive centre for adult patients with congenital heart defects where a total of 289 of these operations have been carried out in the past ten years. As for primary operations, atrial septal defects and aortic valve defects were the most frequently operated conditions.
The most reoperations were performed in patients with tetralogy of Fallot. More than 15% of patients were operated on by use of minimally invasive cardiac surgery (MICS).
Overall mortality and morbidity rates in our patients were comparable with the results of routine cardiac surgery procedures.