The Role of Cardiac MRI in the Postsurgical Follow Up of Aortic Coarctation-Our Experience

Congenital cardiac disease represents the most frequent malformation pathology, with an incidence variablefrom 0.5% to 1.2% of live births. These values are significantly higher if wealso consider mild congenital defects that do not require treatment or are notrecognized at birth, but which can become clinically relevant in adulthood, such assome abnormalities of the aortic arch, the bicuspid aortic valve, an abnormal venous returnpartial, coronary anomalies and fistulas. In our South Tyrol region (Italy), the birth rate is ofabout 5500 births / year, equal to a prevalence of CCD of 50 -60 / year. About 40% of the CCDsrequires surgical treatment in the neonatal period (<30 days) and about 90% of patientsoperated reach adulthood. The rate of growth of the adult population affected by CCD isequal to 5% per annum. The purpose of this study is to present our experience in the morphological and MRI studyfunctional in the post-operative follow-up of aortic coarctation.