David left for the cath lab at around 1:30. Before he left, his nurse inked us up. In the cath lab, David will first receive a bronchoscopy to hopefully open up his airways. He still has collapsed areas in each of his lungs, so this should hopefully help with that. After that, the cath will proceed. It seems likely that they will put a stent in one of his pulmonary arteries which were patched up after his bands were removed during his Norwood last week. There had been slight narrowing observed, and the thought is that the added pressure after closing his check is causing the artery to narrow further.
This is a fairly risky cath procedure – partially because it’s an emergency one. To reach the pulmonary arteries, they have to cross the stent that is in his Sano shunt. There is also risk that ballooning or stenting the pulmonary artery will cause the patched area to tear back open causing bleeding. The surgeon is on standby if things go wrong, and there’s a chance that David comes back on ECMO again if his saturations cannot be improved or David needs to be opened up again.
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