Anesthesia for the adult patient with an unrepaired congenital cyanotic heart defect: a case report.

Adult congenital heart disease, previously considered a rare comorbidity, is increasingly becoming a reality for today's anesthesia providers. Improvements in prenatal diagnosis, sophisticated surgical techniques and equipment, advances in pediatric critical care, enhanced efficacy of cardiovascular pharmacologic agents, and an overall increase in postrepair survival rates have resulted in an estimated population of approximately 800,000 adults with congenital heart disease. Despite successful surgical repair or palliation, these individuals present the anesthesia provider with a multitude of challenges. Individualized care of these fragile patients should be approached with a keen understanding of the patient's underlying cardiac anomaly. This case report chronicles the anesthetic care of a 36-year-old woman presenting for left-sided ureteroscopy with laser lithotripsy and stent placement. Her medical history was remarkable for the presence of complex congenital heart disease consisting of multiple anomalies: a double-outlet right ventricle, transposition of the great arteries, pulmonary stenosis, atrial septal defect, and a hypoplastic left ventricle with concomitant mitral valve atresia. General anesthesia was successfully administered, with meticulous attention given to maintenance of systemic vascular resistance to minimize shunting, oxygenation, administration of preprocedure antibiotics, and judicious replacement of intravenous fluids via air-filtered tubing.