Adults With Surgically Treated Congenital Heart Disease

IN 1939, Dr Robert Gross, a pediatric surgeon, ligated the ductus arteriosus in a child. 1 Shortly thereafter, Dr Helen Taussig proposed that cyanotic children with diminished pulmonary blood flow could be helped by creating a patent ductus. 1 Five years after the first ductus was divided, Dr Taussig made the clinical diagnosis of tetralogy of Fallot, and Dr Alfred Blalock created a ductus by turning down a subclavian artery and suturing its end to the side of the pulmonary artery, establishing the Blalock-Taussig anastomosis. 1 Thus began a therapeutic era that witnessed one of the most successful rehabilitation programs in medicine. 1 In the last 25 years, more than a half million patients with functionally important cardiac malformations have reached adulthood by virtue of surgical and/ or medical treatment. 2 Cardiac surgery remains the most dramatic and useful therapeutic intervention in patients with congenital heart disease, but complete cures are