Inadequate Venous Return As A Primary Cause For Fontan Circulatory Limitation

The Fontan procedure is an approach to single ventricle palliation involving connection of systemic veins to the pulmonary artery(PA) without a functional sub-pulmonary pumping chamber. This is associated with chronically elevated systemic venous pressure and limited stroke volume augmentation. The latter is usually attributed to either inability to increase transpulmonary flow related to abnormal pulmonary vascular response in the absence of a sub-pulmonary ventricle or to low ventricular compliance.

Source: The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation - July 15, 2014 Category: Transplant Surgery Authors: Alexander R. Opotowsky, Dan Halpern, Thomas J. Kulik, David M. Systrom, Fred Wu Source Type: research