Invited Commentary A Plea for a Strategy of Comprehensive Investigation of Patients Following Coarctation Repair: Invited Commentary

The detailed analysis of patients who have undergone a coarc-tation repair by Donazzan et al1 appearing in the current issue of the journal sheds further light on an important controversial issue. Since the 80s, we have known that the development of hypertension in early adulthood is a potential complication of coarctation repair. What is still unknown is how severe this issue is and how large is the population at risk. The only long-term longitudinal studies spanning for several decades arise from one center and points to a risk of death due to hypertension-related morbidity of 20 % within the three decades following coarctation repair.2,3 It seems that our com-munity is still underestimating the incidence of hypertension in our patients. Like others, we have found the incidence of hyper-tension after coarctation repair in an ongoing cross-sectional study of young adults operated in infancy to be more tha