Personalized transcatheter and hybrid approaches for lifelong congenital heart disease management

Congenital heart disease (CHD) management has evolved substantially over recent decades, with transcatheter and hybrid interventions now providing minimally invasive alternatives to conventional surgery. Despite these technological advancements, the focus is shifting from mere innovation to a nuanced understanding of how best to personalize these techniques throughout a patient's lifespan. The current challenge lies in optimizing patient selection, predicting outcomes, addressing real-world determinants, and managing the lifelong cardiovascular sequelae following CHD repair or palliation. Significant studies now underscore that beyond early procedural success, individuals face ongoing risks, such as arrhythmias, heart failure, pulmonary hypertension, valve dysfunction, thromboembolism, pregnancy-related complications, and emerging cardiometabolic concerns. As more patients survive into adulthood after early interventions, clinicians and researchers alike are grappling with the long-term health, quality of life, and system-level management issues that accompany these evolving patient populations.
To bridge these knowledge gaps, recent research has pivoted toward comparative effectiveness, large-scale registries, long-term follow-up data, and greater inclusion of patient perspectives. Evidence from national and international databases is providing new insights into outcome variation by sex, ethnicity, geography, and socioeconomics, while digital monitoring tools are enabling remote care and continuous surveillance. Nevertheless, uncertainties remain regarding optimal risk stratification, individualized treatment planning, the transfer of patients from pediatric to adult services, and the full integration of patient-centered and digital approaches into standard care pathways. The field is thus in urgent need of more robust, nuanced evidence to ground decision-making in everyday clinical settings and to inform strategies for minimizing lifelong morbidity for all CHD survivors.
This Research Topic aims to advance understanding of personalized transcatheter and hybrid CHD interventions, from patient selection through long-term management. It seeks to define the predictors and modifiers of procedural success and long-term cardiovascular health, contextualize outcomes for diverse patient populations, and foster evidence-based, patient-centered strategies in cardiovascular medicine. The objective is to illuminate best practices for lifelong follow-up, reduce preventable complications, and empower both clinicians and patients to make informed, values-based decisions about CHD care.
This Research Topic is broadly scoped to encompass original and comparative studies, real-world registry-based research, patient-centered care models, and digital health approaches focused on the management of CHD across the lifespan. The limits are defined by its exclusive emphasis on individualized, evidence-driven management rather than technological innovation or diagnostic artificial intelligence modalities. To gather further insights, we welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:
o Personalized patient selection and risk modeling for transcatheter and hybrid interventions
o Comparative effectiveness and real-world outcomes, including factors influencing resource utilization
o Lifelong clinical and hemodynamic follow-up after minimally invasive or hybrid CHD repair
o Transition of care, health disparities, and patient-reported outcomes in adult CHD populations
o Digital health, remote monitoring, and decision-support tools to optimize surveillance and follow-up
Appendix: Article types may include original research, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, registry studies, implementation science, and translational research grounded in clinical practice.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• ... View all formats

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Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Review
• Study Protocol
• Systematic Review

Keywords: congenital heart disease, minimally invasive therapy, catheter intervention, hybrid procedure, pediatric cardiology, structural heart disease

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.