BraveHeart
10-05-2009, 05:31 PM
TUESDAY, Sept. 29 (HealthDay News) -- Infants born with a rare heart defect may have better outcomes when surgery to repair the heart is done while the infant is still in the womb, Harvard University researchers say.
The condition, hypoplastic left heart syndrome, occurs when the fetus's left ventricle is underdeveloped and the heart cannot pump enough blood to sustain life. It affects about 1 in 10,000 newborns, and without open-heart surgery within a week of birth, these infants face death. Even with the heart repair, the children lead restricted lives and need at least one heart transplant, researchers say.
"Using the new procedure, in about 30 percent of the fetuses [with technically successful operations], there was an outcome of a two-ventricle circulation after birth," said Dr. Doff B. McElhinney, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and an associate in cardiology at Children's Hospital Boston.
Read more here...
http://www.ajc.com/health/content/shared-auto/healthnews/born/631414.html
Mike:)
The condition, hypoplastic left heart syndrome, occurs when the fetus's left ventricle is underdeveloped and the heart cannot pump enough blood to sustain life. It affects about 1 in 10,000 newborns, and without open-heart surgery within a week of birth, these infants face death. Even with the heart repair, the children lead restricted lives and need at least one heart transplant, researchers say.
"Using the new procedure, in about 30 percent of the fetuses [with technically successful operations], there was an outcome of a two-ventricle circulation after birth," said Dr. Doff B. McElhinney, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and an associate in cardiology at Children's Hospital Boston.
Read more here...
http://www.ajc.com/health/content/shared-auto/healthnews/born/631414.html
Mike:)