Until now, such interventions for children using the least traumatic method were performed only in the capital. Specialists of the St. Nicholas Hospital of the First Medical Association of Lviv saved the baby from future heart failure.
The patient is Veronika from the city of Volovets, in Transcarpathia. She is one year and two months old. A month ago, during a routine examination, the girl was diagnosed with subvalvular stenosis of the aorta. This is a pathology in which the outflow of blood from the left ventricle to the aorta – the main artery that departs from the heart – is disturbed. Simply put, a fibrous membrane, or scar tissue, has formed under the one-way aortic valve, narrowing the outlet from the left ventricle and disrupting the valve’s function. Therefore, the valve allowed blood to flow in the opposite direction. And this means that over time the child would develop heart failure.
Subvalvular aortic stenosis occurs in only 1% of children with congenital heart defects. The only solution was surgery.
In order to perform the intervention in the least traumatic way and without an incision in the middle of the child’s chest, cardiac surgeons decided to operate minimally invasively. Therefore, a four-centimeter incision was made on the right between the ribs, which will not be noticeable under the girl’s hand later.
The difficulty of the operation was that under the aortic valve there are critically important structures – the mitral valve, which regulates the flow of blood from the left atrium to the left ventricle, as well as the conduction system of the heart, the special cells of which produce impulses.
The operation lasted more than three hours and was successful. Everything is fine with the girl. On the sixth day she went home.