Pulmonary Artery Banding Surgery for my Daughter
A lot of you following this blog; reference site have been notified by me about my daughter’s heart condition. If you’re new to the site and have not read up on it I suggest starting off with the original article about her heart condition so that more of you can understand what this article is about.
http://didntpullout.com/my-baby-has-ventricular-septal-defect-vsd-what-is-vsd
Throughout the updates on this site I have mentioned that she will need certain surgeries and have also mentioned that she has been placed on a feeding tube due to her lack of weight gain. Which is key to determine when she can finally get her VSD’s patched up.
VSD is the common heart problem with newborns where there are holes in a kid’s heart not allowing them to pump blood to necessary places in the right manners. Patching is required to fix the VSD’s. With a newborn baby it isn’t always required to have immediate surgery. Surgery can wait depending on the size of the VSDs and the weight gains of the child.
If a VSD isn’t fixed immediately due to whatever reason they usually give the kid time to feed and grow. It is also common for a baby to not eat all too well because of the heart condition. When this instance takes place and there are no signs of weight gains other steps are done to help with the development of the baby until time comes for the actual patching of the VSD’s.
Surgery 1 – also known as the Pulmonary Artery Banding is pretty much what it sounds like. It is the procedure before the actual patching of the VSD which is commonly done on kids who need to wait out for growth and development for the patching to take place. This is typically done on children who can’t grow nor feed right due to the heart condition.
A pulmonary artery banding is exactly what it sounds like. The pulmonary artery gets a belt tied around it so it can decrease the flow of blood into the lungs. This procedure is pretty quick and not as risky as others. More information about it can be found here: http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/905353-overview
Today March 24th, 2009 was the day the cardiologists said would be good for her to start with one of her two surgeries that she will need to help her with her heart condition.
It was painful to see her go through it all and was painful to even wheel her into the operating floor. Sad and worrisome. Here are some pics relating to our day.
Surgeon team talking about our daughter.
Wheeling her out
After about 5 hours of surgery they notified us about it going perfectly fine. We are now in the intensive care unite watching over her. I will keep this updated.
