Emergent Cardiac Surgery With Cardiopulmonary Bypass in Early Pregnancy: Report of Four Cases

BACKGROUND: Due to current medical improvements, more women with cardiac disease are being operated during pregnancy. Fetal loss has been found to be significant between 9-30% of them and the surgery is supposed to be done maximal in the first trimester. OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to report our experience with urgent cardiopulmonary bypass carried out in early pregnancy and to analyze factors that may influence fetal and maternal morbidity and mortality after surgery. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We have retrospectively reviewed the case notes of the patients who underwent cardiac surgery during early pregnancy in our institution from January 1997 to October 2011. RESULTS: During that period cardiac surgery was done in 305 patients in childbearing age (between 15-50 years) from which 4 were pregnant and in the first half of their pregnancy. All of them had previous surgery due to rhumatismal heart disease .The surgery was emergent in 3 cases and urgent in 1 case. They were operated under normothermic conditions, high flow and hemodynamic stability throughout the procedure. There was no fetal loss but one patient sustained a cardiac arrest secondary to asthma complicated by post-anoxic brain injury. CONCLUSIONS: Normothermia and hemodynamic stability are the most important factors which help to reduce fetal loss during open heart surgery in pregnancy. The fetus has an auto-regulation which comes into play when the mother is experiencing shock.