Mortality burden in patients born with Ebstein’s anomaly: a 40-year nationwide cohort study

Survival rates for unoperated patients with Ebstein’s anomaly (EA) are unknown. We estimated overall long-term mortality in operated and unoperated EA patients, compared with the general population in Sweden.

Using national medical registries, Swedish individuals born 1970–93 and diagnosed with EA between 1970 and 2011 were included. The hazard ratio for overall mortality for EA patients (n = 216) vs. the matched comparison cohort (n = 2160) was 43.7 [95% confidence interval (CI): 24.8–82.5]. Mortality risk for EA patients (vs. controls) decreased as birth period progressed, with hazard ratios declining from 63.6 (95% CI: 26.3–191.8) for those born in the 1970s to 34.4 (95% CI: 15.8–83.1) for those born in the 1980s and 20.2 (95% CI: 1.6–632.5) for those born at the beginning of 1990s. The overall mortality hazard ratios for unoperated and operated patients with EA (vs. controls) were 30.2 (95% CI: 13.8–73.3) and 63.7 (95% CI: 28.1–172.5), respectively. The risk of mortality among unoperated EA patients (vs. controls) declined with progressing birth period, with hazard ratios declining from 58.4 (95% CI: 15.1–415.2) in the 1970s to 22.9 (95% CI: 8.0–75.3) in the 1980s and 10.2 (95% CI: 0.3–395.9) in the 1990s.

Overall all-cause mortality for patients with EA declined dramatically from 64 times to 20 times that of controls without EA, from the 1970s to the early 1990s. Unoperated patients with EA had better survival than did operated patients, possibly reflecting the higher severity of disease or more severe associated cardiac defects in patients undergoing surgery.