Clinical factors affecting the early postoperative prognosis of infants suffering surgery for congenital heart diseases: A single-center experience of 511 patients

The integrated model of prenatal diagnosis and postnatal treatment for congenital heart disease (CHD) leads to an increasing number of operation in infants. This study aims to reveal the risk factors for postoperative early mortality and delayed recovery in infants less than 3 months old, who underwent surgical treatment for CHD in the Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University during the past 5 years. Clinical variables were collected via medical records. Delayed recovery was defined as the time of postoperative intubation, or cardiac intensive cure unit (CICU) stay, or hospital stay longer than its third quartile. Risk factors for early postoperative prognosis and the odds ratio (OR) were analyzed with logistic regression analysis. A total of 511 infants underwent surgical treatment for CHD from January 2016 to June 2020 were retrospectively reviewed, including 217 (42.5%) infants with complex CHD. The median age was 60 days (3 hours-90 days); and median weight was 4.5 (1.7- 8.4 kg). There were 26 postoperative mortalities, making the incidence at 5.1%, including 5 (5/294, 0.7%) mortalities in patients with uncomplicated CHD, and 21 (9.6%) mortalities in patients with complex CHD. Based on multivariable analysis, risk factors for postoperative mortality were diagnosis of complex CHD (OR=5.53,