Congenital Heart Disease and Brain Injury

Abstract

During the past 25 years, remarkable progress has been made in the surgical treatment and survival of infants with congenital heart disease.¹ Recent data have shown that in-hospital death rates for neonates were less than 10% for the treatment of transposition of the great arteries with the arterial-switch procedure and less than 20% for the treatment of hypoplastic left heart syndrome with aortic arch reconstruction using the Norwood procedure.² Before the development of the Norwood procedure in 1980, the vast majority of infants with hypoplastic left heart syndrome died.³ On the other hand, several studies have shown that many children . . .