Surgical repair of complete atrioventricular canal defects in infancy : twenty-year trends. Discussion

Case histories of 301 patients with complete atrioventricular canal defect presenting to our institution in infancy between Junuary 1972 and Junuary 1992 were reviewed with the purpose of identifying the factors responsible for the observed improvement in perioperative mortality over this time period. A retrospective analysis of hospital records examined 46 patient-related, morphologic, procedure-related, and postoperative variables for associations with perioperative death and reoperation. Operative mortatity decreased signficantly over the period of the study from 25% before 1976 to 3% after 1987 (p<0.0001)