All heart patients have some liver disease after fontan surgery
The Fontan operation is a series of three staged reconstructive surgeries in children born with single-ventricle disease, a life-threatening condition characterized by a severely underdeveloped ventricle, one of the heart's two pumping chambers. The palliative surgeries re-route blood to the lungs, but result in an abnormal physiology that puts many organ systems at risk. One such organ is the liver, in which fibrosis develops in response to elevated pressure within the veins. Over time this can lead to liver cirrhosis, a condition of significant liver impairment. "We have known for some time that liver fibrosis is a complication of Fontan surgery, but this was an important study that demonstrated that the length of time after the Fontan operation is a significant contributor to the degree of fibrosis," said study leader David J. Goldberg, MD, a pediatric cardiologist at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). Goldberg and colleagues published their study on...