A Surgical Integration Technique for Right-Sided and Left-Sided Superior Venae Cavae

The treatment of some subsets of patients having both right-sided superior vena cava (SVC) and left-sided SVC may be very challenging. We performed the SVC integration (SVCI) technique with end-to-side anastomoses between the two SVCs on 4 such patients (age, 5 to 11 months; body weight, 5.4 to 10.2 kg) with excellent outcomes. In 2 patients, we performed intrapulmonary artery septation with SVCI; in 1 patient, pulmonary artery sling repair with SVCI; and in 1 patient with supramitral stenosis related to persistent left-sided SVC, repeated Blalock-Taussig shunt (BTS) with SVCI. Our SVCI technique is very useful in specific cases (eg, in candidates for the Fontan procedure.