Ce. Ruiz et al., THE ROLE OF INTERVENTIONAL CARDIOLOGY IN PEDIATRIC HEART-TRANSPLANTATION, The Journal of heart and lung transplantation, 12(6), 1993, pp. 190000164-190000167
Hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS) is the most common cause of car
diac death during the first week of life. The prognosis of this fatal
malformation has changed completely since the introduction of neonatal
heart transplantation. However, patients awaiting a heart donor are a
t high risk for closure of the ductus arteriosus and are exposed to co
mplications from indwelling central venous catheters and long-term use
of prostaglandin E(1). To maintain the ductal patency, which is cruci
al for the survival of these patients, we performed a stenting of the
ductus arteriosus in six infants with HLHS using a 2 cm length balloon
expendable stent. Age ranged from 5 to 92 days and weight ranged from
2.1 to 5.4 kg. Successful stenting with subsequent hemodynamic stabil
ity was obtained in all the patients. Patient 4 died 24 hours after st
enting from hemothorax related to an attempted subclavian catheter pla
cement. Heart transplantation was successfully performed in patients 1
, 2, 3, and 5 at 15, 1, 50, and 8 days after stenting, respectively. P
atient 6 underwent successful heart transplantation 157 days after duc
tal stenting.