MINSK, 1 July (BelTA) – Belarusian surgeons have performed a very complicated and complex heart surgery on a three-year-old boy, Director of the National Research Center for Pediatric Surgery Konstantin Drozdovsky told reports, BelTA has learned.
The boy was born with an aortic valve disease. In such cases doctors usually remove the damaged valve and replace it with a mechanical valve. However, such a surgery can be performed only in adults. Children usually need the Ross-Konno procedure. During the surgery, the aortic valve is replaced with the pulmonary valve. After implanting the pulmonary autograft, the pulmonary valve is reconstructed with an appropriately sized prosthesis.
“Apart from that, we needed to restore the heart function, because the left ventricle was covered with fibrous tissue that had to be removed. The valve repair was also performed. Thus, the surgery consisted of four stages and took a total of about 14 hours. The heart did not beat for 3 hours 20 minutes,” Konstantin Drozdovsky said. Ten specialists were involved in the surgery.
This is not the first surgery the boy had to go through. After the birth the baby received a minimally invasive heart surgery. After some time he had an open-heart surgery that kept him alive for three years. “The surgery we performed took a lot of planning. The success of the surgery depended to a large extent on how anesthesia and cardiopulmonary bypass were performed, as well as the boy's post-surgery condition. Luckily, we managed to eliminate the defect completely. Now the patient's condition is stable; his heart beats in a usual mode,” Konstantin Drozdovsky said.
The Ross-Konno operation is a rather rare procedure that needs exceptionally high qualification of surgeons. Usually, congenital heart diseases can be treated by minimally invasive surgeries right after birth. However, about 5% of children need further, more complicated surgeries.
The previous Ross-Konno operation was performed about ten years ago in an 11-month-old baby. Back then, Belarusian doctors were assisted by a team of American surgeons. This baby is alive. He has recently had his aortic valve replaced with a mechanical valve.
The National Research Center for Pediatric Surgery has recently conducted another unique surgery in a pediatric patient who had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a very rare condition in children. Usually such patients are operated when they grow up. “The problem was that the left ventricle was fully covered with heart muscle. Our task was to make place for the left ventricle. Had this surgery failed, the only option remaining for the kid would have been a heart transplant. Fortunately, we managed to clear an adequate space for the left ventricle. The patient feels good after the surgery,” Konstantin Drozdovsky said.
