We have now met with another surgeon that specializes in
congenital heart diseases. This visit took place on Thursday December 11th,
2014. The surgeon was Dr. Joseph Forbess at Dallas children’s medical center.
Dr. Forbess went to Harvard University, did his residency at Duke University
and has worked at Boston children’s hospital, which is the leading hospital in
pediatric congenital heart diseases. He performs an average of 20 Norwood
procedures per year and has a success rate at approximately 95.3% during his
last years. Since our son has a few more complex defects his surgery will be
more critical. Dr. Forbess explained the different steps he wanted to take with
our son’s heart. First he wanted to put in a heart catheter and make an opening
in the atrial septum so that oxygenated blood can come from the lungs and be
pumped out into the body. When this opening is done the blood flow comes very
quickly and to slow down the blood flow he wanted to put on bands on the
pulmonary arteries. This procedure has been done in very critical HLHS patients
and is used as an extra precaution.
After this he wanted to wait 5-10 days to let our son stabilize and rest
and then have the full Norwood surgery. This means three surgeries in his first
2 weeks of life. Dr. Forbess is the first doctor that has mentioned this, is
this a good or a bad thing?
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