Syndrome: Indications and Results

Background. The development of new screening tech-niques for the early detection of Marfan’s syndrome has prompted evaluation of the results of cardiac operations in children with this syndrome. The purpose of this study was to determine the surgical indications, opera-tive results, and need for reoperation in children with Marfan’s syndrome. Methods. From 1980 to 1996, 245 patients underwent cardiac operations for complications of Marfan’s syn-drome; 26 (11%) were less than 18 years of age. The mean age at the time of operation was 10.3 6 1 years (range, 8 months to 17 years); 18 of the patients were male. Indi-cations for operation were aortic root dilatation (15 pa-tients), mitral regurgitation (4 patients), aortic root dila-tation and mitral regurgitation (6 patients), and aorti