Catheter-based Interventions to Reduce or Modify Surgical Risk in High-Risk Adult Congenital Heart Disease Patients.

The field of adult congenital heart disease has changed greatly over the past sixty years. As patients are now surviving longer into adulthood due to various improvements in surgical technique and medical technology, the demographic of patients with congenital heart disease (CHD) has changed, such that there are now more adults with CHD than there are children with CHD. This older and more medically complex population needs more interventions to treat residual defects or sequelae of their initial surgeries, and many of these patients are now deemed high risk for surgery. When the surgical risk becomes too great, either due to patient complexity, surgical complexity, or both, then transcatheter procedures may have a role in either mitigating or avoiding the risk altogether.