Interventional cardiac catheterization in congenital heart disease

Interventional cardiac catheterization has a major place in the management of congenital heart disease. Since the Rashkind atrioseptostomy in mid-1960s, many techniques have been developed. For some, it is necessary to close a cardiac or extracardiac shunt using occluder (double disc system, plug, coil...): closure of atrial septal defect, ventricular septal defect or patent arterial duct. For others, it is necessary to treat a valvular or vascular stenosis using a balloon catheter: dilatation of the pulmonary or the aortic valve, dilatation of aortic coarctation. For vascular stenosis, balloon angioplasty may be associated with stent implantation. Moreover, since more than 10 years, valve implantation can be performed: initially for pulmonic valve (the Melody (TM) valve from Medtronic or the Sapien (TM) valve from Edwards Lifesciences); but probably, most of the valves in the future could be implanted using appropriate tools and hybrid techniques combining cardiac catheterization and surgery. All these techniques were developed because of progress in fluoroscopy, and more recently association of different imaging techniques (echocardiography, MRI and CT) provides more information about the true anatomy. Interventional cardiac catheterization will continue to increase with use of new tools as 3D printing, tissue engineering and nano-techniques. It seems that from correction with open-heart surgery, many lesions could be repaired in future by hybrid techniques without opening the heart.