Intensive care in adults with congenital heart disease: cost implications of a changing patient population.

Current estimations suggest there are around 800,000 patients in the USA with congenital cardiac lesions requiring specialist care [1]. Improved surgical and cardiological interventions mean that numbers of patients with moderate-severe congenital lesions will increase [2], resulting in increased requirement for repeat surgery in adulthood. This is reflected by an increasingly complex case mix requiring ICU admission. The potential impact of this changing patient population upon ICU resources has not been addressed.