But he came through it, he had the operation and came through the first stage which is called the
Norwood Procedure.
Later this year, Liam will need to undergo the final operation in a series of three high-risk operations known as the
Norwood Procedure.
Owen, she said, was born with left hypoplastic heart disease, which up until the development of the
Norwood procedure to "reroute the heart's plumbing," was often fatal for infants.
The operation was the second of the three-stage
Norwood procedure to get the heart pumping as normally as possible.
The new trial compared two techniques used in the initial riskiest stage of surgery, called the
Norwood procedure.
Known as the
Norwood Procedure, the aim of this treatment is to re-route the blood through the right side of the heart.
The operation is called the
Norwood procedure after the surgeon who developed the technique.
Recent improvements in surgical technique and intra- and postoperative care have improved survival following the
Norwood procedure to 80% at some centers.
However, she recalls the agony of first hearing her son's diagnosis and having to quickly choose among only three options available to a parent whose child is born with HLHS: 1) a heart transplant, which requires waiting for an available heart, and once found, bears the uncertainty of rejection by the body of the recipient; 2) "comfort care," which means no medical intervention and allowing the infant to die naturally; and 3) the
Norwood Procedure, a proven-successful surgical option involving a series of three surgeries that can rebuild a congenitally damaged heart--ultimately, the option she and her family chose for her son.
This is known as the
Norwood procedure and involves three operations of extremely high risk open heart surgery.
The neonatal cardiac unit was the first in the country to use a complex treatment called the
Norwood Procedure.
If the
Norwood procedure is performed to create a normal size aorta, a series of three operations will be required and his chances for survival will only increase to approximately 50 percent.
