Lay-open pulmonary arterioplasty for postoperative hilar pulmonary artery stenosis

Lay-open pulmonary arterioplasty, a novel surgical technique to enlarge postoperative stenosis at the hilar pulmonary artery, was evaluated.

Lay-open arterioplasty, in which the enlarged hilar stenotic pulmonary artery is partially made up of previous surgical scar tissue instead of being covered by a patch, was performed on 10 patients whose ages ranged from 2.2 to 15.7 years. Surgical results were assessed by angiography.

All patients tolerated the procedure without bleeding or embolic complications associated with pulmonary arterioplasty. Nine patients underwent concomitant procedures including total repair (n = 5), central interposing shunt (n = 3), and right ventricular outflow tract reconstruction (n = 1). No deaths or life-threatening events occurred during the total follow-up period of 18 patient-years. The stenotic segment was significantly enlarged from the preoperative diameter of 0.9 +/- 1.1 mm (mean +/- standard deviation) to the postoperative diameter of 8.0 +/- 1.3 mm, values which correspond to 7.0% +/- 8.8% and 68.4% +/- 11.5% of the normative values, respectively. A follow-up angiogram (n = 5) revealed an increase in the pulmonary artery diameter balanced with somatic growth (initial value, 65.2% +/- 9.0% of normal; second value, 69.1% +/- 7.7% of normal). No aneurysms or clinically significant restenoses were seen on the angiograms.

Our initial midterm results with this method were promising. The pulmonary arteries subjected to this procedure grew in proportion to somatic growth.