News about the surgery

Surgery is tomorrow around 12 Noon - please pray!

________________________________

Jennafer and I spoke to the registered nurse today who works with the cardiologists and surgeons here at the hospital and she gave us all the info on the upcoming surgery.

Currently, Ainsley is scheduled for the second surgery of the day tomorrow, so it should begin sometime around 12PM (edited my previous post which said 2PM). The surgeon will be going through her side and not in the middle of the chest. This is because they have decided to repair the coarctation (restriction) in her aortic artery and believe that her aortic arch is just fine. Also they will not be repairing the hole in the septal wall that this time (her heart murmur), and will wait to see if it heals closed on its own over time. This is great news, since the surgery will not require a heart and lung bypass and therefore will be less traumatic on her body. They said that the surgery should take about 2 hours with most of the time being the prep work.

After the surgery she will be on ventilation for 24 hours and have a chest tube until she is feeding again. The risks of surgery are very small being less than 1% for stroke, death, or paralysis. The largest risk is to the nerve that runs along the aorta and controls the vocal cords. It could impair her feeding for up to 6-8 weeks if the nerve is stretched. It does repair on its own over time, but injury to the nerve happens in 25-30% of patients. The second largest complication percentage-wise is lymph nodes being cut during the surgery, which would cause a milky substance to show through her chest tube. If so, she'll have to be on a special formula for 6 weeks.

Her biggest challenge after surgery will be eating and gaining weight, but the nurse is really confident that Ainsley will do well with the amount of activity she has been exhibiting since she has been in the hospital and the stability of her vital signs.

Also, the initial concerns of left venticular non-compaction have been mostly alleviated after followup echocardiograms, and her pulmonary function on her left side is perfectly normal (this is a huge answer to prayer for me). She does has a bicuspid aorta valve on her left side, which means we will have to monitor that as she grows up.

What this all means is that they don't have to work on her heart, just her artery, and they don't have to repair the whole arch, just cut out the small section that constricted and sew it back together. Because of this they can go through her side and don't have to cut her open down the middle of her chest. Also, her recovery should be much quicker as a result.

We'll let you know tomorrow when we get news on the results of the surgery.