In the previous post “About Katja” we discussed her CHD and her birth. We get asked a lot about her repair. The most common questions are “Is she fixed now?” “If they did surgery why does she need more?” “How did they do it?” “What’s a conduit?”

So we’ll talk a bit about Katja’s initial “repair” and how that relates to her future surgeries.

During OHS the sternum is opened and the heart is placed on a bypass machine (it’s much more complicated but for our purposes we’ll be keeping this simple. Feel free to search and learn more). Now because Katja is TA Type 1 she had a small PA (pulmonary artery) branch. So her amazing team in Chicago was able to disconnect her PA from her “Truncal valve” which then became her aortic valve. They then attached a “conduit” which is an artificial artery, to her PA branch. Now conduits can be made of all kinds of things, human and animal alike. They then created a hole in her heart to access the VSD (hole inside her heart). They repaired her VSD and attached the conduit to her heart. The surgery lasted 8 hours. So yes, this is me sugar coating it. It’s much more complex but you know have a general idea of her first repair.

During her first OHS we were informed that her aortic valve had four leaflets (usually we have three). This was causing some leaking and issues but they felt with how tiny she was, it was best to leave it until the next surgery. As her surgeon said “It’s like putting stitches in tiny wet tissue paper. I rather leave it, than cause more damage”. 

Katja was “fixed”, Yay! Not so fast. Her conduit was sized for a 6lb infant. Conduits don’t grow (We are getting there! Lots of research being done on this). So that means, as Katja grows, she outgrows her conduit. You guessed it, that means life long surgeries until she reaches “Adult size”. Four months after surgery her conduit started to narrow and Katja was sent in for an emergency catheterization. The cath team was able to insert a balloon and expand Katja’s conduit back to a larger size but we knew another surgery was coming. So we waited, we watched and we prepared for OHS #2.

Katja came home 12 days after surgery (our little warrior!). We created a video about her first year you can watch here: