We report the immediate postoperative results of 98 patients who underwent surgical treatment for tetralogy of Fallot. A paliative operation was employed in 29 children and total correction was performed in 80 patients (109 operations). There were 2 postoperative deaths in the group of paliative treatment which occurred in the beggining of our experience and no deaths were found in the last 20 operations. In the group of patients who underwent total correction there were 9 deaths (11,2%), but only 2 of these deaths occurred in the last 42 patients operated. The presence of a previous shunt (8 patients) did not interfere with the postoperative result. The factors that determined a higher postoperative mortality were: age under 2 years, weight under 10 kg, presence of transannular patch of the right ventricle and some kinds of associated anomalies. Our combined operative mortality of 4.7% in the last 2,5 years, is the support of our current choice for 2-stage surgical correction.
tetralogy of Fallot; tetralogy of Fallot