In addition to the general consequences of surgery and cardiopulmonary bypass , lesion-specific complications can occur after surgery for congenital heart disease. It is important for the pediatric intensive care specialist to fully understand the preoperative anatomy and the intraoperative details of these patients. This allows a timely and appropriate treatment of general and lesion-specific complications. In this article we provide a list of commonly-performed surgical procedures and possible associated problems to be anticipated in the early postoperative period. Then it follows a discussion about the diagnosis and management of these complications, based on their pathophysiological features.

It is very important to understand that the univentricular heart surgery is just palliative, not being in anyway a definitive or curative surgery, but nowadays it's the best initial treatment of this complex heart disease. The fundamental philosophy of treatment of every univentricular heart is to ensure the flow system and/or restrict the lung flow. Thus, initially a patient with univentricular heart who is undergoing surgery may need to ensure systemic flow (reconstruction of the aortic arch type Norwood), to restrict the lung flow (pulmonary banding) or to provide enough pulmonary flow (pulmonary-systemic fistulae). However, some heart diseases with univentricular physiology remain "balanced" autonomously, until the "second" stage of palliation is performed (cavo-pulmonary anastomosis type Glenn), but others require performance of pulmonary banding, if there's no native lung protection and/or repair of the systemic circuit in a first stage, to reach next palliation steps in the best possible conditions.