fontane complications

[hughesbaby1]

my nephew just had a fontane surgery a few months ago and he is still in the hospital. He has  grown so many spider veins inside the chest and the doctors has never seen anything like this. He is also now bleeding through his bowels which has caused him to have 18 units of blood since the 2 months period. The doctors said that their is nothing else that they can do for him. Has their ever been a case like this before on veins that has grown everywhere and they are leaking blood and what do they need to do about it to save him?

[hughesbaby1]

Yes there are high pressure and all sorts of veins growing in the chest and stomach.They can't do a heart transplant because of the pressure is so high that he will bleed to death. They also tried to go in and block of some of those veins but there are to many.His liver is swollen from the pressure and bleeding in the bowels.

[Jeffrey R Boris, M.D.]

Dear Hughes Baby,

I would need to evaluate your nephew further before saying what is happening here.  However, I can give you some background.  The Fontan is typically the third in a series of surgeries for children born with a single ventricle instead of the normal two.  It relies on flow to go directly from the large veins of the body returning blood to the heart into the pulmonary arteries without an intervening ventricle pumping it in.  This means that there needs to be an unobstructed pathway with low pressure to get blood into the lungs.  What you are describing is concerning to me that there may be either some significant obstruction or high pulmonary artery pressure, or both, that is causing blood to back up and cause the findings he is experiencing.  However, it could also be occuring if his heart is not pumping well.  This is a seroius problem that requires an experienced team of pediatric cardiologists and cardiac surgeons.