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Newer Heart Surgery for Infants Offers First-Year Survival Benefit over Traditional Procedure – 4
Narrator: This is NIH Health Matters. I’m Joe Balintfy. Every year, about one percent of babies are born with abnormally formed hearts. For babies born with only the right ventricle, the heart chamber which pumps blood to the lung, there are two surgical treatments. Dr. Gail Pearson at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute explains that both involve artificial connections, called shunts.
Pearson: The newer variation, instead of having a shunt from the aorta to the pulmonary artery… has a shunt for the blood directly from the right ventricle, which is the baby’s only functioning ventricle, to the pulmonary artery.
Narrator: For details on how these procedures compared in a recent study, 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.
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