Extreme windkessel effect can cause right heart failure early after truncus repair

An infant developed severe right heart failure early after truncal repair with a pulmonary homograft. A mechanical obstruction by narrowing could not be identified at the homograft or pulmonary arteries. However, functional obstruction was caused by an extreme windkessel effect in a massively dilated homograft that absorbed rather than transmitted the pulse wave. Effective treatment consisted of replacing the dilated homograft by a rigid aortic homograft of equal size as the initial homograft. When confronted with circulatory failure after allograft placement, the clinician should not only look for obstruction by narrowing, but also consider the windkessel phenomenon.