Long-Term Nationwide Follow-Up Study of Simple Congenital Heart Disease Diagnosed in Otherwise Healthy Children

Background—Systematic follow-up is currently not recommended for patients with simple congenital heart disease; however, only a few data exist on the long-term prognosis of simple congenital heart disease. Methods and Results—We undertook a nationwide follow-up study of a cohort of 1241 simple congenital heart disease patients, diagnosed from 1963 through 1973, in otherwise healthy children and alive at 15 years of age. We identified 10 age- and sex-matched general population controls per patient. We followed the study population through Danish public registries from the age of 15 years up to January 1, 2013 with respect to mortality, cause of death, morbidity, and medical follow-up. The patients were followed for a total of 58 422 patient-years and had a median age at the end of follow-up of 47.4 years (interquartile range, 43.5–50.9). Mortality was increased compared with the general population, both overall (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR],1.9; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.5–2.4)] and for patients (79%)...