Quick surgery summary for newbies

Wren is scheduled to have his first heart surgery this afternoon PST. He is 5 days old and in the NICU.

The surgery will repair a coarctation in his aorta and remove the PDA - forcing his left heart to pump all the blood he needs. Till now he has been maintained on prostglandins.

Simple Coarc Surgery diagram

Although the surgeons recommend we try this procedure - as his left heart structures are all small to borderline - they do not know whether it will work or cause him to go into heart failure. If he shows signs of heart stress / failure in the hours or days after the procedure they will try and reverse the repair and go ahead with a Norwood.

Norwood Surgery diagram

As a result, the surgeon is not doing a simple end-to-end anastamosis but will be inserting a gortex patch in the region of the coarc to ensure he can revert to a Norwood should it be required in an emergency.

Obviously, this surgery is not as high risk as many others - he should be out within 2 hours - but the post operative period is going to tell us whether he will have a chance of a biventricular repair or will become very sick and need emergeny intervention.