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Elsevier, International Journal of Cardiology, (203), p. 245-250

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijcard.2015.10.081

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Determinants of outpatient clinic attendance amongst adults with congenital heart disease and outcome

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This paper is available in a repository.

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Abstract

Background: Adult congenital heart disease (ACHD) guidelines advise life-long, regular, follow up in predefined intervals for ACHD patients. However, limited data exist to support this position. We examine, herewith, compliance to scheduled outpatient clinic appointments and its impact on outcome. Methods and results: We examined 4461 ACHD patients (median age at entry 26.4 years, 51% female) and their follow up records at our tertiary centre between 1991 and 2008. Clinic attendance was quantified from electronic hospital records. For survival analysis we employed the last clinic attendance before 2008 as starting of follow-up. Overall 23% of scheduled clinic appointments were not attended. The main predictors of clinic non-attendance (CNA) were younger age, non-Caucasian ethnicity, lower socioeconomic status, number of previous CNAs and the lack of planned additional investigation/s (e.g. echocardiography) scheduled on the same day. During a cumulative follow-up time of 48,828 patient-years, 366 (8.2%) patients died. Both, the number of CNAs (HR = 1.08, 95% CI 1.05???1.12 per CNA, P