Children with congenital heart disease and cardiomyopathy are a unique patient population. Different therapies continue to be introduced with large practice variability and questionable outcomes. The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of various medications on intensive care unit length of stay, total length of stay, billed charges, and mortality for admissions with congenital heart disease and cardiomyopathy.

We identified admissions of paediatric patients with cardiomyopathy using the Pediatric Health Information System database. The admissions were then separated into two groups: those with and without inpatient mortality. Univariate analyses were conducted between the groups and the significant variables were entered as independent variables into the regression analyses.

A total of 10,376 admissions were included these analyses. Of these, 904 (8.7%) experienced mortality. Comparing patients who experienced mortality with those who did not, there was increased rate of acute kidney injury with an odds ratio (OR) of 5.0 [95% confidence interval (CI) 4.3 to 5.8, p < 0.01], cardiac arrest with an OR 7.5 (95% CI 6.3 to 9.0, p < 0.01), and heart transplant with an OR 0.3 (95% CI 0.2 to 0.4, p < 0.01). The medical interventions with benefit for all endpoints after multivariate regression analyses in this cohort are methylprednisolone, captopril, enalapril, furosemide, and amlodipine.

Diuretics, steroids, angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, calcium channel blockers, and beta blockers all appear to offer beneficial effects in paediatric cardiomyopathy admission outcomes. Specific agents within each group have varying effects.