Now What?

It seems that the preliminary opinion on which surgery Drew will need is a two-ventricle repair. Dr. Teitel, who did the cath, thinks that Drew’s heart function looks good and that the subaortic area looks big enough to handle the flow a two-ventricle circulation would require. Dr. Parrish, our cardiologist at UCD, agrees based on the echo that was done last month. The teams from UCSF and UCD will have a teleconference next Tuesday to discuss our case and hopefully come to a consensus. In the meantime, Dr. Parrish would like to get more pictures of that area of Drew’s heart before Tuesday so that they have as much information as possible before the conference call. We are supposed to go in for another echo tomorrow morning. Dr. Teitel also said that the pressures in Drew’s pulmonary artery are slightly high, but he wasn’t sure why. Elevated pressures there make the Fontan procedure slightly more risky, so that is another reason that the two-ventricle approach is looking better. Of course, they may say that they can’t make a decision until they are in surgery and can actually see for themselves how his heart looks, which is what happened with his first surgery. Although I would love for Drew to have a “normal” heart, I really just want it to be clear to the doctors which procedure is the best option for us.