Gender Affects Outcome of Pediatric Cardiac Surgery

A study conducted among hospitals in California (USA) has shown that female children have a 51% higher mortality than male children when undergoing cardiac surgery. The results were reported in the September 17, 2002, issue of Circulation.

In the study, investigators analyzed the outcomes of 6,593 children younger than 21 years of age undergoing 1 of 23 types of surgical procedures for congenital heart disease in 20 hospitals. They found 345 in-hospital deaths among the group, an overall mortality rate of 5.23%, but female patients had a 51% higher mortality than males, even when other medical and nonmedical variables were equal. The researchers speculate that this may be due to biologic differences between young males and females. They concluded that the outcome does not appear to be related to factors influencing the delivery of in-hospital care.

"The study is the first step towards the understanding of the role of gender in determining outcomes of patients with heart disease. Understanding the causes for gender differences in mortality will lead to clinical interventions that ultimately can improve the outcome for female infants and children with heart disease,” said Ruey-Kang R. Chang, M.D., of the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center (Torrance, CA, USA), principal investigator of the study.




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