PubMed1975
20 patients with partial form of persistent common atrioventricular canal underwent surgery at the Centro di Cardiochirurgia "A. Blalock", University of Turin, between 1969 and 1974. In each case the treatment of lesions took place in the following order: the repair or replacement (one case) of the mitral valve; the closing with a patch of the atrial septal defect; the repair, in one case, of the tricuspid. The most frequent post-operative complications were arrhythmias, which in two cases consisted of a total atrioventricular block. Only one patient died postoperatively for an acute pulmonary oedema following an imperfect mitral valve correction. Six months after surgery, another patient died from bacterial endocarditis. Thirteen of the eighteen surviving patients showed excellent results at the clinical and/or hemodynamic check; two had fair results and three had poor results. In two cases, mitral insufficiency was hemodynamically aggravated, whilst in another five it disappeared. In eight, a slight apex systolic murmor 1-2/6 persisted, which was not correlated with any radiological or electrocardiographical sign of mitral insufficiency (and for three of these, not even a hemodynamic one). The authors consider that the most difficult problem in surgical therapy for these malformations is still the treatment of mitral lesions.