What is this surgery anyway?

Since I know not everyone reading this has heard my explanation of what they are going to be doing in this surgery, I figured that I would do my best to write a description.

Normal blood flow through the heart:

Vena cava, Right atria, tricuspid valve, right ventricle, pulmonary artery, lungs, pulmonary vein, left atria, mitral valve, left ventricle, aorta to the body and then back to the vena cava.

Jimmy's circulation at birth:

Vena cava,right atria, left atria, mitral valve, left ventricle,right ventricle, then both the pulmonary artery and the aorta exited the right atria. soooo, that means that blood went out to the body and the lungs from the same chamber. This made him what is termed, a "blue baby" cause he wasn't oxygenating all the blood that was sent out to the body.

As an infant he had multiple surgeries to create shunts and route the blood to the lungs before going out to the body. Then at age 7 he had a corrective surgery, called a "Fontan" to "fix" the circulation.

Over time all the patients that had a Fontan end up requiring heart transplants due to the dilation of the right atria that is made to be the only pumping chamber on the right side of the heart as well as failure of the created connections. That was until about 15 years ago. Now I am not sure when they actually started performing this corrective surgery the new way, but due to the "new" way of correcting the circulatory pathway the patients do not have the same complications and failure of the created circulatory pathway. In other words, the outcome are better and fewer longterm complications occur.

So what's the "new" way of fixing this problem? Basically, they connect the vena cava directly to the pulmonary artery bypassing the right side of the heart all together. Then the blood flows to the lungs back to the left atria, throught the mitral valve, into the left ventricle, and out the aorta to the body and back to the vena cava.

So now to the nitty gritty of what they are doing today. First they have to undo what was done when Jimmy was 7. Then they will create the connection from the vena cava to the pulmonary artery with a synthetic material called gortex. Because one of the longterm complications that develop from the "old" way of doing this surgery is atrial arrythmias (or fast heart beat), they are also going to do a "maze procedure". This is a procedure where they "burn out" the natural electrical pathways that trigger the heart to beat. Because they are "burning out" the trigger they have to create an artificial trigger; this is done by placing a pacemaker. It is also possible that they may have to "debulk" the right atria. Since the right atria has become gigantic over the years from all the pressure that it has had to endure by being the pumping chamber to the lungs, they may have to cut part of it away (debulk).

So, that's it in a nutshell...sounds prety straight foreward right? I hope this helps you all to understand this a little better and answer any questions that you might have.