Skip Over Navigation Links

NIH Radio

Newer Heart Surgery for Infants Offers First-Year Survival Benefit over Traditional Procedure – 2

Narrator: This is NIH Health Matters. I’m Joe Balintfy. Most babies are born with two functioning ventricles - those are the pumping chambers in the heart. But some infants with a common birth defect have only one ventricle.

Pearson: This is called hypoplastic left heart syndrome.

Narrator: Dr. Gail Pearson at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute explains a recent trial to determine whether one procedure helps more than another.

Pearson: We were targeting enrolling these babies in order to compare two different types of surgical procedures.

Narrator: Results show the newer procedure offers better survival in the first year, but second year results are similar for both procedures. To get study details, visit nhlbi.nih.gov. Health Matters is produced by the National Institutes of Health, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Search Tips

Contact Us

Send questions or comments to:
Joe Balintfy
NIH News Media Branch
NIHRadio@mail.nih.gov
301-435-7557

About NIH Radio

NIH Radio offers free audio news programs from the National Institutes of Health, your reliable source for health information.

All NIH Radio content is in the public domain and can be used without charge or restriction provided that it is not used to misrepresent our agency nor used to suggest we endorse any private organization, product, or service.

NIH Radio is a service of the Office of Communications & Public Liaison.

This page last reviewed on March 16, 2011

Social Media Links