Paediatric cardiac surgery or heart surgery in children, are surgical procedures which
are done in the heart for a child who are born with congenital defects. In other terms,
these children are born with birth defects in the heart, or surrounding blood tubes
coming from the heart that we try to correct them by performing various surgical procedures
in such a way that these children can go on to get into a normal life.
Paediatric cardiac surgery field is a very vast field. Children are born with various
birth defects in the heart. Some of them are simple and some of them are complex. The commonest
defects include the connections or the communications between two sides of the heart. We know that
the heart has four chambers, two of them receive blood and two of them pump blood. On the right
side, the blood is pumping to the lungs. On the left side, the blood is pumping to the body.
The communications exist in some form between
the two chambers either as an atrial septal defect or between the receiving chambers of
the heart or as a ventricular septal defect otherwise called the communication between
the two pumping chambers of the heart or a PDA, a patent ductus arteriosus. These are the common defects
that need surgery to correct the defects in children.
The birth defects or the congenital defects in the heart are a vast group of disorders.
Some of them are simple. Some of them are complex. We call them simple because they
are a straightforward communication defect between the two sides of the heart. On the
right side which pumps blood into the lungs and on the left side which pump blood into
the body. The communications can be either an atrial
septal defect or a ventricular septal defect or a PDA. Surgery is performed to correct
them either using a patch or closing them directly. Those are the commonest surgeries
that we perform in our everyday life.
As we know, children born with congenital
defects or the defects which exists from day one of life. They’re born with the defect.
Some of the defects do manifest almost instantaneously when some of the defects do cause trouble
when the child continue to grow later in life. It’s very important to understand the physiology
in the child and offer surgical correction at very appropriate age. Having said this,
majority of the times, we tend to correct them quite early in life and most of our surgeries
are done in children in less than one year age which also means it’s very, very important
to look after these babies before surgery, during surgery, and after surgery. These surgeries
are quite major lasting for a few hours for each single procedure that we perform, that
means we have to look after the child in such a way that the child can return back to normal
life once they recover from surgery.
The majority of the birth defects or congenital
defects in the heart are correctible by surgical procedures. Whether it is simple or complex,
the surgery is evolved over time in the last 40 years or so. And the technology is advanced
so much that we’re provided almost every information that we need in terms of understanding
these defects. With this, I would wish to say that a prognosis
for a child who has gone through even a major cardiac surgery is very good to excellent to lead
a normal life. Some of the children have gone on to become an excellent sportsperson, great
academician, and they live a normal life in to adult and very late years in life. That
means we try to get them back into a normal life span throughout their life. Surgery is really rewarding in these individuals.