Cardiac Catheter 2012

Well, Ethan had his clinic appointment in January. It wasn't good news. He has significant Right Ventricle Hypertrophy and enlargement.

This is due to his heart trying to pump the blood through the stenotic pulmonary artery.

So they admitted him for a Cardiac Catheter on Valentines Day of all days!

He went down at 10.30am after a pre-med he was in a very good mood!



He was supposed to have been down a couple of hours, but at 2.30pm we were still waiting... nervously!

Dean overheard a conversation at the nurses station where they'd been asked to check for an urgent cross match 4 litres "for a patient bleeding out... patient name... Ethan" He went white.

The Doctor realised he had heard it and came then, and explained that he had lost a little blood and may need a transfusion. As it turned out he didn't.

We got to go see him up in recovery at 3.30pm. 5 (very long!)hours after we had put him on the table for them to knock him out.

Our cardiologist was very unhappy and has explained that the pressures in the right side of Ethan's heart are nearly double what they should be and that's why he has had the Hypertrophy and why they right side is enlarged.

They spent a long time trying to get into the pulmonary artery, the stenosis was very bad. Eventually when they got into it, they put a stent in.

Unfortunately, then, they couldn't get back into the artery to "consolidate" the stent - this involves blowing the balloon up in the artery to help the stent "stick" to the artery. This meant that the stent was wobbling around inside.

There was nothing that they could do about it, and we need to watch him in case the stent becomes loose and drops into his heart.

Anyway, the little they could do seems to have relieved some of the pressure in his heart. So we were sent away with an appointment to go back in a week to check the artery hadn't slipped.