Building a whole heart for children born with half: Q+A with a cardiac surgeon

December 27, 2012 by MassDevice

Could a new surgical approach help children like Lucas get the rest of their heart back?

Our pediatric heart surgeons are used to pushing the envelope. Last month we reported on a new kind of heart valve for children with mitral valve defects that can expand as they grow. Now the same team reports 10 years of experience trying to rebuild a lost half of the heart for children born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS), a devastating, life-threatening defect.

The new strategy, called staged left ventricle recruitment (SLVR), seeks to harness a child's native capacity for growth and healing to encourage the undersized left ventricle to grow, giving the child a fully functional heart.

I sat down with Sitaram M. Emani, MD – a cardiac surgeon in the Heart Center at Boston Children's Hospital and lead author on the SLVR paper – to learn more.

Sign up to get our free newsletters delivered right to your inbox.

Q: What is HLHS?

A: It's a condition where the left side of the heart doesn't develop properly while a child is in the womb, and is too small and weak at birth. That makes it hard for the left ventricle – which is responsible for pumping freshly oxygenated blood out to the rest of the body – to function properly.

Q: How is HLHS currently treated?