Background: Obstructed total anomalous pulmonary venous connection (TAPVC) typically present with severe cardiovascular decompensation and requires urgent surgical management. Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a major risk factor affecting mortality. Perioperative management focuses on providing inotropic support and managing potential pulmonary hypertensive episodes. Milrinone and inhaled nitric oxide (iNO) efficiently reduce pulmonary artery pressure (PAP) and help to improve the outcome. The aim was to determine the outcome of patients with high PAP with milrinone alone and a combination of iNO and milrinone.
Material and method: After ethical committee approval, the study was conducted over a period of 3 years in 80 patients with obstructed TAPVC repair. A total of 80 patients having severe PAH (supra systemic arterial pressure) randomly divided into two groups with 40 patients in each (M & MN). Group M (milrinone) patients received milrinone and Group MN (milrinone & iNO) patients received both milrinone (after opening aortic cross clamp) and iNO (post operative ICU). Ventilation time, hospital stay, ICU stay, complications, in hospital mortality were compared between both groups.
Result: Ventilation time, Intensive Care Unit (ICU) stay, hospital stay for group M was 8.02 ± 5.74 days, 11.25 ± 7.33 day, 14.92 ± 8.55 days, respectively, and for group MN was 5.02 ± 1.78 days, 8.27 ± 3.24 days, 10.3 ± 3.18 days, respectively. In hospital mortality for group M and MN was 10% and 2.5%, respectively. P value for each variable was significant < 0.05 (except mortality).
Conclusion: Most of the patients with obstructed TAPVC had severe PAH. Management of severe PAH with a combination of milrinone with iNO had a better outcome than milrinone alone.
Keywords: Inhaled nitric oxide; milrinone; obstructed TAPVC; pulmonary artery hypertension.