Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiovascular Surgery: Since 2000

The growing numbers of adult congenital heart disease patients, of course, is the improvement in survival rates for nearly all types of pediatric heart surgery, driven by advances in surgical techniques and medical management. The introduction of percutaneous valve implantation and endovascular stents left relatively few areas of the cardiovascular system left that have not been explored by the interventional pediatric cardiologist.Mortality is becoming a less prominent issue, and the focus has shifted toward morbidity, functional status, quality of life, and resource demands in both the short and long term.Fetal echocardiography and genomic medicine is overturning the traditional practice in management of congenital heart defects.