Is additional pulsatile pulmonary blood flow beneficial to patients with bidirectional Glenn?

Results of additional pulsatile pulmonary blood flow with bidirectional glenn cavopulmonary anastomosis: positive effect on main pulmonary artery growth and less need for fontan conversion.

BACKGROUND Additional antegrade pulsatile pulmonary blood flow obtained by leaving the main pulmonary artery patent during bidirectional cavopulmonary shunt has been shown to give additional benefits to the bidirectional Glenn cavopulmonary anastomosis. We retrospectively evaluated our 20-patient pulsatile Glenn series in order to find out whether these salutary effects were valid or not. MET...

Bidirectional cavopulmonary shunt with additional pulmonary blood flow.

There are some controversies regarding the usefulness of leaving additional pulmonary blood flow when establishing a bidirectional cavopulmonary shunt. From April 2002 to September 2008, 13 patients (mean age, 24 +/- 16 months) underwent a bidirectional cavopulmonary shunt procedure with fine adjustment of additional pulmonary blood flow, as an intermediate step before the Fontan operation. The...

Effect of accessory pulmonary blood flow on survival after the bidirectional Glenn procedure.

BACKGROUND The bidirectional Glenn procedure (BDG) is used in the staged surgical management of patients with a functional single ventricle. Controversy exists regarding whether accessory pulmonary blood flow (APBF) should be left at the time of BDG to augment systemic saturation or be eliminated to reduce volume load of the ventricle. The present study was a retrospective review of patients un...

Bidirectional cavopulmonary connection without additional pulmonary blood flow in patients below the age of 6 months.

OBJECTIVE The bidirectional cavopulmonary connection (BCPC) has shown excellent results as an intermediate step towards permanent palliation in functional single ventricle morphology. The optimal timing of the BCPC, though, remains unclear. This investigation focuses on results in a subgroup of patients under 6 months of age. METHODS Between 2001 and 2006, 124 patients received a BCPC followe...

A Computational Fluid Dynamics Study on Bidirectional Glenn Shunt Flow with an Additional Pulsatile Flow Through a modified Blalock-Taussig Shunt