To examine the overall morbidity of patients who underwent surgery for congenital cardiac defect during childhood.

A congenital cardiac defect treated with surgery is seldom totally cured. The incidence of residua, sequelae, and comorbidity is quite high. The morbidity has not been thoroughly examined.

Medication was used as an indicator of morbidity. Data from the Finnish Research Registry of Paediatric Cardiac Surgery were linked to data from the medication registry of Finland’s Social Insurance Institution. This study includes 5116 patients with a mean age of 33.5 (ranged from 14.7 to 64.8) years, who had undergone surgery for congenital cardiac defect between 1953 and 1989. The use of medicines among patients in 2004 was compared with 10232 age- and sex-matched control subjects.

The overall use of medicines was frequent; 62% of patients and 53% of controls had purchased at least one prescribed medicine (risk ratio: 1.2, 95% confidence interval: 1.1–1.2). The number of patients using cardiovascular medicines (17%) and anti-thrombotic agents (5%) was higher than that of control subjects (risk ratio: 2.2 and 8.4). In addition, the patients needed medicinal care for epilepsy (3%), asthma (7%), and psychiatric diseases (10%) more often than did controls (risk ratio: 2.2, 1.5, and 1.3, respectively).

Patients operated on for congenital cardiac defect had more chronic diseases and used more medicines than did controls.