Background: Adults with congenital heart disease (CHD) represent an increasing proportion of patients undergoing non-cardiac surgery.
Objective: To identify the most important parameters for management of anesthesia.
Material and methods: Evaluation and discussion of the current original research and guideline recommendations.
Results: There are approximately 300,000 patients with CHD living in Germany. The preoperative evaluation is an important influencing factor affecting perioperative morbidity and mortality. Echocardiography is the key instrument for identifying cardiac conditions predisposing to adverse events. The subdivision of CHD into lesions with left-to-right shunt, obstructive lesions and complex congenital heart diseases facilitates the classification of the pathophysiology.
Conclusion: Decisive for the perioperative outcome of patients with CHD are the identification of high-risk patients, understanding of the individual situation with respect to the underlying pathophysiology and the intraoperative maintenance of cardiac output.
Keywords: Echocardiography; Hemodynamics; Obstruction; Risk assessment; Shunt.