Coarctation of aorta repair at the National Heart Institute (1983-1994).

This retrospective study illustrates our approach to this problem over the years, from performing subclavian flap aortoplasty initially to the more accepted procedure now, which is resection and end-to-end anastomosis. Coarctation of aorta in our population is seen in a varying age groups and are also associated with other cardiac anomalies including both acyanotic and cyanotic congenital cardiac defects. Therefore a wide variety of surgical procedures were performed including resection of the coarcted segment and end-to-end anastomosis, subclavian flap aortoplasty, patch aortoplasty and synthetic tube graft interposition. Subclavian flap aortoplasty is not widely practised anymore in favour of resection with end-to-end anastomosis. Fifty four point four percent of patients had isolated coarctation, 10.5% had associated valvular defects, 28.1% had other simple congenital defects and 7.0% had associated complex cyanotic congenital defects. Perioperative mortality was 5.26% and is correlated with the younger age of patients at time of surgery and severity of cardiac failure at time of presentation. We did not see any difference in mortality for patients with complex congenital disease or between the different surgical procedures. However, we did find that in the early period when resection with end-to-end anastomosis was performed, there was a significantly higher incidence of morbidities.

The ethnic characteristics and prevalence of diabetes mellitus, hypertension and hyperlipidaemia in patients who underwent coronary artery bypass grafting in Hospital Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.

A retrospective study was done on 302 patients who had undergone coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) in Hospital Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia--46.0% were Chinese, 40.1% were Malays and 11.6% were Indians. Overall and irrespective of race and sex, the prevalence of diabetes mellitus, hypertension and hyperlipidaemia was 45.7%, 78.8% and 89.1% respectively indicating that hyperlipidaemia was the most prevalent risk factor amongst this cohort. The Indians had the highest prevalence of the three risk factors. The Chinese and the Malays most frequently presented with the combination of hypertension and hyperlipidaemia.