Before you proceed further, please read this DISCLAIMER

Pulmonary atresia is one of the most complex and diverse congenital heart malformations. With a poor natural history (around 90% of infants do not survive to their first birthday without treatment), it used to be often diagnosed by pathologists at autopsy.

No longer ! The condition came under close scrutiny by cardiac surgeons ever since fledgling attempts at repair showed promising results. And with a growing understanding of the anomaly, surgeons have devised increasingly complex operations for its correction.

Today, we know enough about pulmonary atresia to perform successful correction, sometimes, AT A SINGLE OPERATION ! And that at the unbelievable age of a ONLY A FEW MONTHS !!

I attempt to trace here the mind-boggling evolution of the surgical treatment for Pulmonary Atresia. Join this exciting exploration, which is an epitome of all that cardiac surgery stands for, and is.

Pulmonary atresia is a very complex condition, and describing its repair in a simple manner is well nigh impossible. So I will divide this section into TWO PARTS.

The first is a simplified version (though after reading it, you may not agree !), hopefully comprehensible to anyone with some knowledge of the structures involved.

The second section is the REAL McCOY ! In this part, I cut loose with all the jargon of the "specialist". Definitely, this is heavy stuff, but for the unique special breed of person who deals with this kind of material every day (I mean the cardiac surgeon and the cardiologist !), I hope it will be a useful reference resource.

Onwards and forwards....

[Have you read the disclaimer ?]
[The Simplified Version] [The Heart Surgeon's Version]