Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 August 2008
The development of pulmonary atteriovenous fistulas after bidirectional cavopuomonary operat-tions, such as the bidirectional Glenn shunt and Kawashima's procedure, has raised concern. Development of these fistulas, which are more frequent than initially thought, can represnt a limiting factor in the late outcome of these patients and may even limit the indication for these of surgery. Whether the fistulas can be reversed by transforming the surgical procedures has yet to be established. In the hope of avoiding this kind of complication, thought to be caused by the lack of passage of a hypothetical hepatic factor through the pulmonary circulation. wedevelped an inverred type of gidirectional cavopulmonary connection in which the blood coming from the liver perfuses immediately both lungs. This is made possi-ble by shuntiong via an intra-atrial tunnel the blood from the superior caval vein directly to the left atrium, and the blood from the inferior caval vein to the right branch of the pulmonary trunk (keeping its bifurcation intact). We describe findings in two patients undergoing successful surgery with this technique. Serial follow -up with cohtrast echocardiography did not show evidence of arteriovenous pulmonary fistulas.Despite our numbers being small, and the time of follow-up being limited, we believe that it is importantto document these and similar cases
To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.