Transcatheter versus surgical closure of ventricular septal defect: a comparative study

Abstract
Background

In many countries, surgical closure of ventricular septal defects remains the recommended approach of ventricular septal defect closure. The aim of this study is to compare the safety, efficacy, and clinical effects of surgical versus transcatheter closure of a ventricular septal defect.

Methods
We conducted a comparative randomized study on patients undergoing ventricular septal defect closure. Patients were allocated to undergo either surgical (group I) or catheter (group II) ventricular septal defect closure.

Results
Seventy-two patients were included. Operation success was achieved in 100% of the surgical group versus 33 of 36 patients of the percutaneous group (91.6%) (p value 0.076). There was no significant difference regarding the residual ventricular septal defect. The postoperative echo in group I revealed severe tricuspid regurgitation in one patient (2.7%), and one patient needed a permanent pacemaker. On the other hand, in group II, during the procedure, one patient had severe tricuspid regurge (2.7%). There was a significant difference in the postoperative data favoring group II over group I regarding ventilation duration, intensive care unit stay, total hospital stay, and blood transfusion (P value < 0.001 each).

Conclusion
Both transcatheter device closure and surgical repair are effective treatments. In contrast, the psychological profile of the transcatheter device was superior to the surgical repair, especially in terms of avoiding sternotomy scar, blood loss and transfusion, and hospital stay. On the other hand, transcatheter intervention is limited only to the anatomically suitable ventricular septal defects, in addition, surgical backup is a must in case of complicated transcatheter closure, which gives the upper hand to surgery to be the recommended approach for most of the ventricular septal defects.

Clinical registration number
NCT05306483 registered 04/05/2022 (retrospectively registered) at ClinicalTrials.gov PRS.

Graphical Abstract