Congenital Heart Disease Open Heart Surgery-for Babies and Toddlers

I had little contact with heart disease however just 10 days later was in the Pediatric Intensive Care Uni-t (PICU) bedside of our newborn baby who needed life-saving open heart surgery on 1 December 2002. To get different ways to look at this, consider taking a view at: Zofran Birth Defect Lawsuit Alleges Drug Caused Heart Defects In Two Children.

Though many diseases are very well known, the next are little known facts:

Heart problems are present in 1 in 10-0 babies

Heart disease in young ones could be the leading cause of childhood death in Australia accounting for half an hour of most child deaths.

Almost twice as many kiddies die of congenital cardiovascular disease when compared with all childhood cancers

In 80-yard of cases the cause is basically unknown.

The remarkable thing is how far surgery and medicine has progressed to permit another opportunity for many children like ours that only twenty years ago wouldn't have survived.

Whilst there is a myriad of different abnormalities that may happen, our newborn needed reconstruction for a coarctation of the aortic arch, reconstruction of both aortic and mitral valves and closing of the Ventricular Septal Defect (VSD).

The aortic and mitral valves were thin and the composition of the valves was significantly dissimilar to what they should have already been. Although the aortic valve reconstruction was quite effective, the mitral valve is a lot more complex and following surgery the gradient across the valve was still high ergo leaving our baby with mitral valve stenosis (narrowing of the valve). Http://Www.Kltv.Com/Story/30375064/Zofran Birth Defect Lawsuit Alleges Drug Caused Heart Defects In Two Children includes new information about how to do it.

This particular surgery took 5.5 hours and the levels were high an one in five or 10% possibility our son wouldn't survive. We found out about http://www.abcnews4.com/story/30375064/zofran-birth-defect-lawsuit-alleges-drug-caused-heart-defects-in-two-children by browsing Google Books.

Following surgery the next 24-hours is observed as a period where if issues are going to be experienced, this is probably be the period. This is not to say that post 24 hours means everything is fine and dandy. Recovery within our case was slow using a further five days within the Pediatric Intensive Care Uni-t for weaning off the ventilator which allows and occasionally triggers breathing, in addition to waiting for one's heart to stay in order that pacemakers and other drugs are not necessary.

A lot of the recovery time is trial and error or more like careful monitoring and modification as necessary. As an example following heart surgery patients are fluid restricted to help the job the heart has to do thus seeking to stop the build-up of fluids resulting in heart failure. On the other side of the cash however is the fact that a patient may then find yourself dry.

It's hard to know whether advance knowledge of a heart condition in a unborn child could be a lot better than the surprise we familiar with diagnosis two days after the birth of our child. Either way it is a tremendously stressful procedure that in our case didn't and hasn't finished with the surgery following delivery. In most cases further surgery is needed, for us another reconstruction of the mitral valve at two-years old and further surgery is expected with ultimate substitution of the mitral valve with an artificial valve.

The unidentified all through our process and in many cases is once the next surgery is likely to be required. For these cases, categories of babies, youngsters and kiddies get from day to day, week to week, month to month, and sometimes year to year before the next call to surgery comes.

For all those in an identical condition our thoughts and desires go out to you. For anybody interested, the story in terms of the ongoing saga with our son can be found at http://www.beatinghearts4kids.blogspot.com...