Exercise Capacity After Total Cavopulmonary Anastomosis: A Longitudinal Paediatric and Adult Study

Aims Fontan palliation is a surgical strategy for patients with complex congenital heart disease, in whom biventricular circulation cannot be achieved. Long-term survival is negatively affected by the absence of sub-pulmonary ventricle and increased systemic venous pressure. Exercise capacity is a known predictor of overall survival and quality of life in congenital heart defects. We aim to track individual trends of peak oxygen uptake (V̇O2peak) after total cavopulmonary connection (TCPC), identify predictors of deterioration, and derive a disease-specific reference V̇O2peak dataset. Methods and results A retrospective study of serial cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET) data, gathered from all patients who underwent TCPC in the Czech Republic between 1992 and 2016. Of 354 consecutive patients with TCPC, 288 (81.4%) patients underwent one or more CPETs yielding 786 unique V̇O2peak values used as a reference dataset. Longitudinal data were available in 206 (58.2%) patients, who underwent a median (inter-quartile range) of 3.0 (2.0–5.0) CPETs over a mean (standard deviation) of 8.9 (5.5) years. The decline of exercise capacity with age was linear and not faster than in healthy peers (P = 0.47), but relative values of V̇O2peak in TCPC patients were 12.6 mL/min/kg lower. Single ventricular morphology and pulmonary artery size had no significant influence on the exercise capacity dynamics. V̇O2peak decline correlated negatively with the trend of body mass index z-score (P = 0.006) and was faster in women than men (P = 0.008). Conclusions Total cavopulmonary connection patients have significantly reduced exercise capacity. The age-related decline paralleled the healthy population and correlated negatively with the body mass index trend. The presented V̇O2peak reference dataset may help the clinicians to grade the severity of exercise capacity impairment in individual TCPC patients.