Background

The prevalence of Down syndrome (DS)-affected births has increased during the past 30 years; moreover, children with DS have a higher incidence of congenital heart disease compared with their peers. Whether children with DS have better or worse outcomes after repair of congenital heart disease is unclear. We sought to identify differences in in-hospital mortality after cardiac surgery in pediatric patients with and without DS using a large national database.

Methods and results

Children aged <18 years who underwent surgical intervention for congenital heart disease were identified using the Kids' Inpatient Database (2000, 2003, 2006, and 2009). Patients were stratified using the Risk Adjustment for Congenital Heart Surgery algorithm. A total of 4231 (8.2%) of the 51 309 patients studied had a diagnosis of DS. In-hospital death for patients with DS was significantly lower than that for patients without DS overall (1.9% versus 4.3%; P<0.05) as well as within risk categories 2 (1.0% versus 1.8%; P<0.05) and 3 (2.3% versus 5.1%; P<0.05). Multivariable logistic regression showed a lower odds of death among children with DS (odds ratio=0.60; 95% confidence interval, 0.47-0.76; P<0.05) after adjusting for Risk Adjustment for Congenital Heart Surgery risk category, premature birth, major noncardiac structural anomaly, and age.

Conclusions

In this large national study, children with DS who underwent repair of congenital heart disease were more likely to survive to discharge than children without DS. Future work is needed to better understand the factors underlying these differences.