[Surgery repair of aortic coarctation in infancy].

OBJECTIVE: The study's purpose is to present our experience with surgical correction of aortic coarctation in infants, at short and medium term, particularly morbidity and mortality.

METHOD: This is a retrospective observational and descriptive trial. We included all infant patients undergoing surgical correction of AC. All data were obtained from the clinical database of the hospital.

RESULTS: We included 20 patients with AC. The surgical technique was extended coarctectomy in 19 patients and, in one patient, a subclavian artery flap was performed. In all patients, the average time of aortic clamping was 18min. The residual gradient measured by echocardiography was in average of 12.2mmHg. One patient died of sepsis secondary to pneumonia. The main cause of immediate postoperative morbidity was systemic hypertension in seven patients, nosocomial infection in four patients with development of sepsis, one patient had to be reoperated due to high gradient. One patient had cholestatic syndrome. Eighteen patients required a transfusion at some time during their hospital stay. Average in-hospital stay was of 12 days.

CONCLUSION: The aortic coarctation surgery has had favorable results so far and we can conclude that the program has been successful. The surgical technique has shown low mortality and complications and midterm follow-up shows low rate of recoarctation.