Comparison of preoperative trans-thoracic echocardiography with intraoperative findings in patients with congenital heart disease undergoing surgery: a prospective observational study

To determine the diagnostic accuracy and safety of trans-thoracic echocardiography alone for indicating surgery by correlating preoperative trans-thoracic echocardiography with intra-operative findings in patients with congenital heart disease (CHD) in a low resource, low volume center.

The pre-operative trans-thoracic echocardiography and intra-operative findings of two hundred and fifty patients with CHD, undergoing surgery at the National Cardiothoracic Centre (NCTC), Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, from 2012 to 2017 were prospectively compared. Included in this prospective study, were all patients with CHD who had trans-thoracic echocardiography alone at the NCTC. Excluded were patients who were operated at the NCTC based on echocardiography done elsewhere, those who had echocardiography at the NCTC but were operated elsewhere, as well as those whose operative decision were based on cardiac catheterization or CT angiography and patients with acquired heart defects. The analysis included profiling of patients on different demographic and clinical parameters. SPSS software was used for analysis.

Of the 250 patients ages ranged from 2 months to 60 years. The mean was 4 years 95 days, median 1 year 180 days. The female sex accounted for 152 (60.6%). The preoperative trans-thoracic echocardiography correlated with intra-operative findings completely in 228 (91.2%) of patients, affirming the accuracy of this imaging modality. There were however, 19 (7.6%) false negatives and 3 (1.2%) false positive. Neither the false positive nor false negative errors resulted in complications or adversely affected the surgical outcome.

Based on the results of this study, preoperative transthoracic echocardiography done by cardiologists at the National Cardiothoracic Center, Korle Bu Teaching Hospital Accra, demonstrated a high correlation with intraoperative findings. Echocardiography also proved to be sensitive, accurate and safe for indicating surgery in patients with congenital heart disease.