Transcatheter Palliative Balloon Pulmonary Angioplasty in Symptomatic Patients with Tetralogy of Fallot and its Outcome at Tertiary Care Setting

Abstract

Objective: To analyze transcatheter palliative balloon angioplasty's safety, efficacy, and clinical outcomes by a single operator in symptomatic Tetralogy of Fallot (TOF) patients in tertiary care. Study Design and Setting: This is a case series study. It was carried out at the Pediatric Cardiology Department PNS SHIFA Karachi and the Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology (AFIC/NIHD) Rawalpindi, Pakistan, from November 2022 to May 2024. Methodology: This study selected patients from the pediatric database using non-probability consecutive sampling. A sample size of n=30 was taken. Symptomatic infants of TOF requiring palliation for (right ventricular outflow tract) RVOT obstruction were included and infants with predominant valvular narrowing and those not fulfilling the criteria of TOF were excluded. Data was entered and analyzed by using SPSS version-24:00. In descriptive statistics, Mean ± SD was calculated for continuous variables while frequency (%) for categorical variables. The Chi-square test was used to find out the association between categorical variables, p-value of <0.05 was taken as statistically significant. Results: Out of 30 patients, 11(37%) were males and females were 19(63%). The median age was 24 months. Immediate improvement in saturation was noted in all patients and transient arrhythmias 5(16%) was the most encountered complication. Conclusion: Transcatheter palliative balloon angioplasty is becoming the first line of treatment for patients with Tetralogy of Fallot due to its physiologic improvement in blood flow to the lungs and reciprocal increase in saturation. It is safe and requires much less hospital stay in a professionally sound environment.