Sadly, there can be significant early death
with these
patients. As mentioned
in my last posting, surgery involves not only fixing the defect inside the heart, but making the larger pulmonary arteries smaller. Sometimes airway intervention is needed, as well, to improve respiratory status. Not infrequently, these children can have prolonged ventilator courses post-operatively; some even require a tracheostomy. However, as much as 75% of these babies survive their surgical repair.