Adult congenital open-heart surgery: emergence of a new mortality score

OBJECTIVES In revised 2018 American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology guideline for the management of adults with congenital heart disease (ACHD), the committee introduced a classification that combines lesion anatomy and physiological status: ACHD anatomic physiological (AP) classification. Anatomy is described as of simple (I), moderate (II) or great (III) complexity, whereas physiology is listed in 4 categories of increasing severity (A, B, C and D). Can this classification predict early postoperative mortality? METHODS ACHD AP classification was determined for 339 adults who underwent open-heart surgery between September 2012 and August 2018. In addition, the adult congenital heart surgery (ACHS) and Society of Thoracic Surgery-European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery (STAT) mortality scores were calculated. A model based on binary logistic regression was applied. The event was early postoperative death. Mortality scores were estimated for each ACHD AP class. RESULTS All patients could be categorized by the ACHD AP classification. The 354 procedures were performed with an early mortality of 3.4% (12/354). The mortality risk for the new mortality score, simply called ACAP score, ranged from 0.2% (95% confidence interval 0.08–0.41%) for ACHD AP class IA to 20% (16.04–24.64%) for IIID class. Observed over expected ratios of early mortality amounted to 0.87, 1.54 and 1.14, whereas areas under the curve of receiver operator characteristic were found to be 0.78, 0.64 and 0.88 for STAT, ACHS and ACAP scores, respectively. CONCLUSIONS ACHD AP classification could embrace all procedures. In our setting, the ACAP score was more predictive of early mortality than the ACHS and STAT mortality scores. It should be validated by further studies and other centres.