Anesthetic Management of Parturients With a Fontan Circulation: A Review of Published Case Reports

Parturients with Fontan physiology provide unique and complex challenges to anesthesiologists. Such challenges include the maintenance of a perfect balance between preload, pulmonary vascular resistance, afterload, and cardiac output in a setting of a single ventricle physiology. The physiological changes of pregnancy add additional burden to an already "fragile" physiology, making the anesthetic management for labor and/or cesarean delivery even more complex. Understanding the impact of these changes on the Fontan physiology and the effect of anesthetic choices on this dyad (pregnancy-Fontan) is an imperative prior to caring for these patients. In an effort to determine how these patients are best managed for labor and/or cesarean delivery, we have reviewed the literature examining the peripartum anesthetic management of parturients with Fontan circulation and have identified 27 case reports.