Hello everyone. Well, Faith went into surgery at 9am. She had actually been admitted the night before due to labs that showed her Potassium and chloride levels were low. She loves being at the hospital (strange, I know) so was thrilled she got to stay. This morning she went from the PICU directly to the operating room after she was given some Versed. Transition went pretty smoothly and now we just have to wait. They said to expect 6 or more hours of waiting. So, I decided that I will take the opportunity to explain what is being done to Faith the best I can.
Faith was born with what is called Hypoplastic Left Heart. This means there is a single effective ventricle supplying blood to the lungs and body. Other defects she was born with are an interrupted and hypoplastic aortic arch, VSD, ASD, a mitral valve leak, DiGeorge syndrome and feeding difficulties to which she has to be fed with a gastric tube.
With Faith's primary cardiac diagnosis being HLHS (hypoplastic left heart syndrome), there are a series of 3 surgeries. The goal of the surgeries are to separate the blue blood (poorly oxygenated) and the pink blood(oxygenated) circulations to secure better oxygen delivery to the body and relieve the extra burden on the heart.
The first surgery was done within the first few days of life. It is called the Norwood and this surgery places a shunt between the aorta and the pulmonary artery to enable adequate blood flow to the lungs.
The second surgery is called the BiDirectional Glenn. In this surgery, they take the blood vessel that returns blood from the head, neck and arms...called the Superior Vena Cava...and connect it directly into the blood vessel going to the lungs called the pulmonary artery. The shunt is removed from the first surgery since it will not be needed anymore since the blood coming back from the upper part of the body is now directed to the lungs through the Glenn. So, after this surgery, the blood coming back through the lower body (through the Inferior Vena Cava) continues to mix with the blood from the lungs, therefore bluish discoloration of the skin, called cyanosis, persists. It allows the single ventricle to do less work, but still more than expected.
So, that leads us to the third surgery. She needs this surgery to improve her quality of life due to her extremely low oxygen levels. Faith lives with oxygen levels at 75% or lower. A normal person would run between 95-100%. So this surgery will improve her oxygen levels which will in turn give her more energy and enable her to live a longer, fuller life. Faith is lucky enough to have the smaller side of her heart functioning well enough for her to have what is called a 1 1/2 ventricular repair or Biventricular Repair. In this surgery, being done today, they will patch her VSD in such a way that both ends of the aorta will feed into the heart. Her left side will pump blood to the body and the other, smaller side will be pumping half of the blood to the lungs. This will be done by placing a valve from the right ventricle to the pulmonary artery. The other half will still be accomplished by the Glenn.
Hopefully this makes sense. I know it is a lot of information, but I tried to explain it the best I could. Faith will no longer be considered to have a single ventricle but now a ventricle and a half!!! The most important thing to know about this is surgery is that will increase her quality of life and should carry her through to adulthood without further necessity for more surgery. An exception to that, however, will be the occassional valve replacement as she grows. Without surgery, her oxygen would continue to drop and her organs would start shutting down. We certainly don't want that as Faith is a VERY SPECIAL LITTLE GIRL and is loved too much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you for checking in on her and I will let you know once she is out of surgery and stabalized.
Love to all!
Shelly
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