- Joined
- Feb 20, 2021
Hypoplastic left heart syndrome is uniformly fatal unless palliated by a series of 3 open heart surgeries. The first is called the Norwood procedure and is performed within the first 2 weeks of life. The second, the Glenn (also known as the bidirectional Glenn or bidirectional Glenn shunt), is generally done between 4 and 6 months of age. Finally, at approximately 18 months of age, the infant receives a surgery called the Fontan, which attaches the vena cava to the pulmonary arteries, thus allowing deoxygenated blood to bypass the single ventricle of the heart.And fuck the life of the mother I guess, since the Ohio woman was at risk from continuing the pregnancy.
It's not like the US has worse maternal mortality than Russia or anything (that's only been getting worse over the past decade).
Also oof, the description of the condition the fetus in the SC case had
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Prolifers trying to force more Tinslees into an existence of suffering![]()
Even after these 3 very major surgeries, the child's heart is not normal. There are patients who survive into adulthood with a single ventricle heart, but within recent memory, HLHS was fatal within hours to days of birth.
Texas Children's Hospital has the best program of its kind in the nation and probably the world. Their program and others, including those at Boston Children's Hospital and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, have pioneered the treatment of kids with single ventricle hearts. Incredibly, in some cases where an abnormality is caught early in gestation and it is felt that with proper intervention there is still the possibility of near-normal left ventricle development, heart surgery can be performed on a fetus in utero (without delivering it). That's mindblowing to me. Almost makes me believe in a higher power. Here's the Boston Children's/Brigham and Women's fetal heart surgery program and here's the CHOP general fetal surgery program. Really takes your breath away to think about. I do want to clarify that not all fetuses with developing HLHS are candidates for surgery. It's not a magic pro-life slam dunk. It is fucking amazing, though, and renews my faith in humanity.
I'd like to write more about this, but...Chantal. I'll be back later.
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