Friday 2nd Update

Well, we just spoke to Dr. Parra about his conversation with the U of M doctors about Will.

Dr. Bove will be out of town next week until Wednesday. So, they plan on lifeflighting Will to Michigan either Tuesday or Wednesday next week. The surgery will either be late next week or early the following week. Michigan is going to call Vandy Monday morning to firm up the details.

They plan to do The Rastelli Procedure for surgery. This is what they plan to do:

1. Remove his B-T shunt. (This is currently the passageway that the heart uses to pump blood the pulmonary artery and to the lungs.)

2. Patch the hole (Ventricular Septal Defect, or VSD) between his left and right ventricle... they will do it so the aorta exits from his left ventricle instead of his right ventricle as it is now. Luckily his right ventricle is big enough that they can patch it this way... the right ventricle will be smaller, but still a good enough size to function properly.

3. Install a conduit that will run from his right ventricle into his pulmonary artery. (This will basically replace the B-T shunt.)

4. Cut open the part of the right pulmonary artery that is currently narrow and reattach it to make it a proper size.


I hope the diagrams (above) that I drew help you understand what I'm talking about.


This is going to be a very high risk surgery. There is no way to really know how it's going to turn out.

The downside to this type of surgical repair is that he will need more surgeries than he would if we had approached the traditional hypoplastic left heart 3 stage surgical repair. Unfortunately, the conduit that they will install will only last 5-10 years, because it cannot grow with him and will require replacement. He will need surgeries around 5, 10, and 15 years of age. But, Dr. Parra said that better technologies could be developed over the next 10 years, and who knows what they could come up with?

We'll let you know how things progress over the weekend!