Entwicklung der interventionellen Herzkatheterverfahren für angeborene Herzfehler

An increasing proportion of congenital heart diseases can be treated by non-surgical procedures with interventional cardiac catheterization nowadays. To appreciate these innovations, it is important to understand the development of these procedures from the very beginning to now. The decisive step in the way to therapeutic cardiac catheterization occurred with the pioneering work of W. Raskind and W. W. Miller in 1966, which described a balloon atrial septostomy to palliate infants with transposition of great arteries. In the following decades, an amazing armamentarium of interventional cardiac catheterization was developed, such as the balloon dilation of valvular and vascular stenosis, the closure of shunts on the atrial, ventricular or vascular level as well as the implantation of stents in stenosed vessels. In Germany, important contributions to the development of interventional cardiac catheterization included the first percutaneous occlusion of a patent ductus arteriosus in 1967, the balloon dilation of valvular aortic stenosis in infants, the interventional completion of the Fontan circuit or an interventional surgical hybrid procedure for infants with hypoplastic left heart syndrome.