The Role of Cardiac MRI in the Postsurgical Follow Up of Aortic Coarctation-Our Experience

Congenital cardiac disease represents the most frequent malformation pathology, with an incidence variable from 0.5% to 1.2% of live births. These values are significantly higher if we also consider mild congenital defects that do not require treatment or are not recognized at birth, but which can become clinically relevant in adulthood, such as some abnormalities of the aortic arch, the bicuspid aortic valve, an abnormal venous return partial, coronary anomalies and fistulas. In our South Tyrol region (Italy), the birth rate is of about 5500 births / year, equal to a prevalence of CCD of 50 60 / year. About 40% of the CCDs requires surgical treatment in the neonatal period (<30 days) and about 90% of patients operated reach adulthood. The rate of growth of the adult population affected by CCD is equal to 5% per annum. The purpose of this study is to present our experience in the morphological and MRI study functional in the postoperative follow-up of aortic coarctation.