Wisdom Heart

Hi everyone,
I had mentioned in an earlier post, Sophia would be having surgery on September 14th. I will try to take a minute and explain what will happen and why.
So as I have explained Sophia has a CHD called Tetralogy of Fallot with Pulmonary trunk atresia.
I put links (in blue) to diagrams of these conditions in a previous post. Because of the defect to the pulmonary arteries (PAs) she was unable to properly return blood to the lungs to be oxygenated. So in the first surgery, as I explained before, she had a shunt put in that ran from her aorta to the existing PAs. This for the most part stabilized her condition. This is not meant to be a permanent solution by any means and she has done better than expected. The main purpose of this was to allow the combination of time and increased blood flow to result in her PAs growing to a size that would be manageable for a more complete repair. So the idea was to give her as long as the shunt would support her to grow and in turn for the PAs to grow as well.
Sophia sees her cardiologist regularly and he does an echocardiogram to see how her heart is functioning. This is not a high resolution test and I believe takes a great deal of finesse to read accurately. He also measures Sophia's O2 saturation. As we get further away from the first surgery, Sophia's O2 sats begin to decrease. This is expected as the demands of her growing body out grow her shunt. Once this process began her cardiologist performed a heart catheterization to get a more accurate picture of how the vessels around her heart were growing, especially the PAs. At that time the results were shared with the surgeons and it was decided that they had grown enough to operate. But since Sophia was still doing OK, they decided to put the surgery off as long as they could so the PAs might grow even more. Now it is important to note, that the idea was to wait, but to make sure she was not compromised by doing so. In other words, it was important to us and her doctors that the surgery be elective and not emergency.
So on her last cardiologist appointment, Sophia's O2 sats were low enough to indicate we needed to schedule surgery. So we did.
Now here is what is supposed to happen. This is just a general overview. I will provide more detail as I am able.
This will be an open heart surgery. Her first surgery required her chest be cracked open but the heart was not operated on, just the major vessels associated with the heart. This surgery will actually require the heart be operated on.
So as I mentioned in a previous post, Sophia is missing the trunk part of her PAs (if you imagine a "Y", she is missing the vertical part). The trunk is the part that connects to the heart and has a valve in it as well. So the idea is to, take a vessel (probably from a cadaver) and make a conduit from the heart to the PAs as they exist now, replacing the missing trunk.
Sophia also has what is called a "VSD" or ventricular septal defect. This is basically a hole in the wall between her left and right ventricles in the heart. This defect is associated with the tetralogy of fallot. The surgeon believes he can repair this at the same time. This is significant because, it is one less surgery Sophia would require later.
Obviously we are anxious about this impending surgery but if it gets our daughter's heart functioning properly it will be wonderful.
I will post more on this in the days leading up to the surgery. And also try to cover more of the therapies and treatments Sophia has received.
Thanks for reading-Michael