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The Annals of Thoracic Surgery, Vol 54, 691-696, Copyright © 1992 by The Society of Thoracic Surgeons

ARTICLES

The learning curve for intraoperative echocardiography during congenital heart surgery

RM Ungerleider, WJ Greeley, RJ Kanter and JA Kisslo
Department of Surgery, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina 27710.

Our group has previously reported a large prospective experience with the use of intraoperative echocardiography with Doppler color-flow imaging (IE-DCFI) during the repair of congenital heart defects. We have now performed IE-DCFI in 621 patients and have observed a major change in the impact of this technology, which has stabilized during our most recent experience (the last 207 patients). To evaluate the surgical learning curve with IE-DCFI, we divided patients into three groups: group 1, patients 1 through 207; group 2, patients 208 through 414; and group 3, patients 415 through 621. There were no major differences between groups with respect to age or disease entities. The average time needed to perform an IE-DCFI examination decreased from 3.75 +/- 1.77 minutes in group 1 to 3.35 +/- 1.52 minutes in group 2 and has remained stable. The number of patients requiring revisions in the operating room (based on IE-DCFI findings) decreased from 17 (8%) in group 1 to 7 (3%) in group 2 to 5 (2%) in group 3. Furthermore, revisions were 100% successful in correcting the problem in groups 2 and 3, whereas 18% of group 1 patients left the operating room with persistent residual defects by IE-DCFI. Surgeons can acquire the ability to interpret the results of IE-DCFI themselves and use it to enhance their operative repair of congenital heart defects, but this requires an experience of at least 200 cases.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

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