Anyone had a valve closed off??

[tantekay]

Hi! Well, we've got Eric's Cath and surgery dates scheduled. We go for Cath on May 18th, and for our Fontan on June 27. The thing on my mind now is what to do with the leaky aortic valve. Due to his surgeries, the pulmonary artery coming off his left vent. is cut and sewn into his aorta. So the blood can go out that way and some still goes through the VSD and out the aortic valve. His last echo showed that he did indeed have more leakage on the aortic valve, but luckily everything is staying in what would be the right vent. which for him is now the outflow chamber. The obvoius concern is that the leakage gets worse and starts coming through the VSD and then we may risk damage to the left vent -- which is definately not good. His cardio has mentioned that since he doesn't really need the aortic valve they may be able to close it off. Which leads to my real quetions.... 1 - has anyone ever had anything like this done, 2 - if they do close it off would this put any added stress on his pulmonary valve he's using -- it seems to be doing very well right now - no leaking that I've heard of yet, and lastly 3 - the cardio says that the surgeon may want to just leave it alone since it's not really causing any harm now but do I really want to wait to see if it's gonna get bad enough to cause harm to the left vent. or why mess with something that doesn't need messed with for now??? I'm going to be talking with his cardio about this as well, but thought maybe I could get some advise before hand. Thanks for taking time to read my small book haha and thanks for any advise you can give.

 

[gijanet]

Good question.............

Good question.............

you reminded me that I never did get a satisfactory response about Katie's pulmonary stenosis/valve. I know it is a moot issue with the fontan, but did they close it off surgically..........or was it so stenotic that it didn't matter? I posed this question when I was wondering if her pulmonary valve was salvageable since the stenosis was not from a problematic valve, but from underlying heart muscle. All I was told was that it was not an option. Since we were in the heat of the battle so to speak, I didn't pursue it further. Now, I'm wondering again, though. Will be looking to see if you get a response from someone else. Oh, and I responded to your e-mail and asked when Eric's surgery was. Guess I should have checked here first. If you have any more fontan questions, feel free to give me a shout as I know how anxious you are. Many hugs. J.