Another Type Of Congenital Heart Disease May Be Cured By The Device And The Surgery

Another Type Of Congenital Heart Disease May Be Cured By The Device And The Surgery.
A congenital verve shortfall that was typically catastrophic three decades ago is no longer so deadly, thanks to new technologies and surgical techniques that admit babies to survive well into adulthood, researchers report. A study in the May 27 dissemination of the New England Journal of Medicine compares the effectiveness of older and newer versions of devices aimed at fixing incompletely formed hearts. The writing-room finds both performing equally well over three years.

It's a "landmark" study, "one that we've never had before in congenital hub disease," said Dr Gail D Pearson, kingpin of the Adult and Pediatric Cardiac Research Program at the US National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which financed the effort. The study, which compared two devices for keeping oxygen-carrying blood flowing in 549 children born with hearts incapable of doing it alone, has not yet produced exhaustive results favoring one stratagem over the other.

But the probing is indeed just beginning. "Continuing follow-up will help us sort out the near- and long-term results". Study architect Dr Richard G Ohye, head of the University of Michigan pediatric cardiovascular surgery division, agreed. "Well be able to follow them to adulthood, and they will teach us about the best way to rule them". The children in the study were born with hearts that had a nonfunctioning - or nonexistent - hand ventricle, the chamber that pumps blood to the body. About 1000 such children are born in the United States each year, one in 5000.

Classically, they were fatal for quick death. But about 30 years ago, Dr William Norwood of the Boston Children's Hospital developed a standard operating procedure in which a shunt is implanted so that blood can fall from the heart to the lungs, where it picks up enough oxygen to sustain life. That Norwood procedure, as it is called, is followed by a right hand operation at 4 to 6 months and a third at 18 to 36 months. If all else fails, a crux transplant can be done.

The new study tested the older shunt, which connects the aorta, the mains heart artery, to the lungs pulmonary artery, with a newer configuration that goes from the heart's right ventricle to the pulmonary artery. The newer shunt provides better results in the foremost 1 year - 74 percent survival without a goodness transplant, compared to 64 percent with the older model. But there are more complications with the newer model, and the results are about the same with both shunts after 33 months of use, according to prefatory data.

So, the story continues. "We're continuing to follow these children until they are at least 6 and quite longer. We'll be learning a lot more information over time". Even without functioning larboard ventricles, "many of these individuals live well into adulthood, including stomach age. Some can live what we think of as normal lives, participating in sports. Others may have more problems. Many have near-normal annoy tolerance and do most of the things children do".

But they do remain at risk of neurological problems, "because of the things they go through and deep-rooted issues". For that reason, the neurological development of the children in the reflect on is being monitored and a report on their mental progress will be issued in time. Whatever the results, "we have ushered in a uncharted era continue reading. This is the first randomized trial in congenital heart surgery".