Materials and Methods: In general, 60 patients treated with open-heart surgery (n=30) and transcatheter (n=30) were evaluated in this study. The two groups were compared in terms of success rate, hospitalization time, hospitalization costs, and complications such as infection, bleeding, arrhythmia, cardiac block, endocarditis, and the need for post-operative re-intervention.

Results: Both groups were effectively treated with either of these two methods. The mean age of surgical patients was significantly (P=0.003) lower than those treated with transcatheter. Although the group treated with open-heart surgery had higher amounts of bleeding, arrhythmia, infection, heart block, hospitalization costs, and re-intervention, these differences were not statistically significant. During the study, none of the patients had endocarditis and none died as well. Finally, patients treated with transcatheter had a mean (standard deviation) duration of the hospitalization of 4.3 (±1.39) days, which was significantly lower (P<0.001) than the surgical method 11.1 (±4.6).

Conclusions: Both trans-catheterization and open-heart surgery treatments are effective in treating patients with secondary ASD although the use of the transcatheter method is less risky and more cost-effective due to the findings in comparison with the open-heart surgery method. However, care should be taken in choosing the patient for this therapeutic intervention. In addition, patients treated with trans-catheterization had a shorter duration of hospitalization, which could be important in terms of family relocation to other family members and the system of treatment. Eventually, due to the high rate of bleeding from patients of young age in both groups, preclinical tests should be performed before the surgery in this age group in order to improve therapeutic techniques.