Background: The heart with its intrinsic and indispensable function is a vital organ in the human body. Surgical management of diseases affecting it was initially thought to be incompatible with life. Surgeons who desired the respect of their colleagues were barred from operating on the heart, on the ground that human knowledge is very limited in that area. This notion was however changed in 1893 when laceration in the left ventricle was successfully repaired at Chicago Provident Hospital in USA. Three years later, the same feat was successfully reproduced several times in Frankfurt Germany. Also by 1938 in Boston Children Hospital, Massachusetts, USA, Robert Gross successfully interrupted a PDA in a 7-yearold child. This was followed by successful repair of coarctation of the aorta and the famous blue baby operation, all in 1944, thus unequivocally, proving that successful operation on the heart was tenable in the western world. On the contrary, in the early 1940s and 1950s, cardiac diseases requiring surgery for whole or part of their management were thought to be rare in Nigeria in particular and Africa in general. The establishment of cardiac registry at UCH, Ibadan in western Nigeria, in 1964 revealed all types of cardiac diseases including those requiring surgical intervention. Today, many cardiac diseases are treated by surgery in NCTCE, UNTH, Enugu and other centers in Nigeria. The western world is abandoning the perfected conventional open access cardiac surgery for minimal invasive cardiac surgery with comparable results vis-à-vis efficacy.

The increasing number of patients presenting with severe anaemia and who invariably receive blood transfusion is of concern. This retrospective study reports the pattern of presentation and the outcome of management of patients who were transfused in the Emergency Paediatric Unit of Federal Medical Centre, Owerri, between September 2002 and August 2004.

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