Acute Cardiac Care for Neonatal Heart Disease

This manuscript is one component of a larger series of articles produced by the Neonatal Cardiac Care Collaborative that are published in this supplement of Pediatrics. In this review article, we summarize the contemporary physiologic principles, evaluation, and management of acute care issues for neonates with complex congenital heart disease. A multidisciplinary team of authors was created by the Collaborative’s Executive Committee. The authors developed a detailed outline of the manuscript, and small teams of authors were assigned to draft specific sections. The authors reviewed the literature, with a focus on original manuscripts published in the last decade, and drafted preliminary content and recommendations. All authors subsequently reviewed and edited the entire manuscript until a consensus was achieved. Topics addressed include cardiopulmonary interactions, the pathophysiology of and strategies to minimize the development of ventilator-induced low cardiac output syndrome, common postoperative physiologies, perioperative bleeding and coagulation, and common postoperative complications.