Participants. In order to obtain two different categories of congenital heart disease with regard to severity, we choose two primary target groups. One group was comprised of parents of children who had undergone a palliative conduit implantation, representing the group with a complex congenital heart disease. This group is referred to as the conduit group. The other group was comprised of parents whose children had undergone a single operation for a ventricular septal defect (VSD), representing the group with a minor congenital heart disease. This group is referred to as the VSD group. The database at the Division of Paediatric Cardiology in Lund, Sweden, was used to find children bom between 1990 and 1998 who had undergone a conduit or a VSD operation at the University Hospital in Lund. The search identified 54 children with a conduit; of these, 22 were excluded because the parents did not speak Swedish or were living abroad, the child had an associated handicap or syndrome, or the child was deceased.