Related Experiment Videos
Fatal pulmonary embolism after atrial septal defect closure in a paediatric patient
1Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, Georg-August-University Göttingen, Germany. tbusch@gwdg.de
Scandinavian Cardiovascular Journal : SCJ
|July 10, 1999
Abstract:
A four-year-old girl died of massive acute bilateral pulmonary embolism 11 days after direct closure of a secundum atrial septal defect (ASD II), despite postoperative anticoagulation until the patient was ambulatory. An autopsy showed thrombotic deposits on the suture line of the ASD closure, bilateral 90% occlusion of the pulmonary arteries, and haemorrhagic ulcerative ischaemic colitis of the descending colon and the sigmoid.