[The risks involved in the heart catheter examination. A retrospective evaluation of the complications after 700 examinations. I. Method, patients, diagnoses (author's transl)].

A retrospective study is undertaken in order to assess the kind and frequency of complications which occurred in 700 heart catheterizations performed in 539 infants and children. This paper deals with the distribution of age groups and diagnoses. The percentages of the different age groups resemble closely those of the "Cooperative Study" of Braunwald and ass. (1968) with the exception that newborns and infants are represented in greater number. This id due to a more active approach to investigation of cardiac malformations in infancy. With regard to the diagnoses those malformations are highly represented which are susceptible to low-risk surgery (Ductus Botalli, atrial septal defect, coarctation, pulmonic and aortic stenosis) and those where surgery is inevitable (tetralogy, transposition of great arteries). Aortic stenosis, too, shows a higher than real incidence because the exact degree of severity can be ascertained only by use of invasive methods. On the other hand there are relatively few ventricular septal defects, because many of them diminish spontaneously in size and do not need catheterization. The rare anomalies are represented in small numbers.