Long-Term Outcomes After Right Ventricular Outflow Tract Conduit Placement

Objective: Our aim was to report on the long-term outcomes of patients who underwent RV-PA conduit placement at our institute. Materials and Methods: We retrospectively reviewed 407 RV-PA conduit placements from January 1997 to December 2018. The primary outcomes were freedom from and risk factor(s) for conduit re-operation. The secondary outcomes were survival, freedom from conduit dysfunction and conduit-related catheter intervention. Results: Of all the included patients, 209 were male (51.4%) and the median age at the operation was nine years (IQR 6, 18 years). The most commonly used conduit types were bovine jugular vein conduit (125, 30.7%), pulmonary homograft (122, 30.0%), and aortic homograft (76, 18.7%). The median follow-up time was 5.1 years (IQR 0.9, 9.2 years). The overall survival was 92.2% at 5 years. Freedom from re-operation was 95.4% and 84.2%,  at 5 and 10 years. Factors related to conduit reoperation were age at operation less than 1 year, diagnosis rather than pulmonary atresia or stenosis, conduit size less than 18 mm, and conduit z-score greater than 3 (all p<0.01). In multivariate analysis, a significant contributing factor for re-operation was small conduit size (13 mm or smaller; HR 6.87 (95%CI 2.36, 20.01); p<0.001, 14–17 mm; HR 3.20 (95%CI 1.28, 8.00); p=0.013). Freedom from conduit dysfunction was 84.4% and 61.6% at 5 and 10 years. Freedom from conduit intervention was 94.4% and 89.3% at 5 and 10 years. Conclusion: Our study showed that patients had excellent survival with acceptable freedom from re-operation despite deteriorated conduit function. Small conduit size is associated with re-operation.