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J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 2000;120:1040-1046
© 2000 The American Association for Thoracic Surgery
Surgery for Congenital Heart Disease |
From the Divisions of Cardiothoracic Surgerya and Pediatric Cardiology,b University of California, San Diego, Calif.
Address for reprints: Patricia A. Thistlethwaite, MD, PhD, Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery, University of California, San Diego, 200 West Arbor Dr, San Diego, CA 92103-8892 (E-mail: pthistlethwaite{at}ucsd.edu).
| Abstract |
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| Introduction |
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Obstruction of the left main coronary artery (LMCA) is a recognized complicating feature of SVAS and is a cause of sudden death in infants with this abnormality.
4 Most often, LMCA stenosis is due to a thickening of the wall of the left main ostium that is in tandem with the aortic component of the disease.
5 Two other mechanisms for LMCA stenosis with SVAS have been identified. In one form, coronary obstruction results from distortion of the aortic valve with adherence of the left coronary leaflet to the proximal ridge of the SVAS.
6 In the most uncommon form, diffuse LMCA narrowing is noted and may, in part, be due to premature atherosclerosis induced by increased perfusion pressure to the coronary artery in systole.
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We report our experience with 9 patients in whom obstruction to LMCA blood flow was a prominent feature associated with SVAS. Three morphologic types of LMCA stenosis were identified, each of which necessitated a distinct surgical approach for anatomic correction.
| Patients and methods |
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Of the 9 patients with LMCA and SVAS, 6 patients were female and 3 were male. The mean age at operation was 5.5 years (range 0.2-32.4 years). Each patient underwent preoperative 2-dimensional echocardiography, color flow imaging, and cardiac catheterization before the operation. Five patients (group 1) had SVAS with a mean preoperative systolic gradient of 61.6 mm Hg and near-circumferential ostial LMCA stenosis, causing more than 70% narrowing diagnosed by cardiac angiography(Fig 1). Of these, 4 patients had SVAS proximal to the innominate artery, and 1 patient had diffuse SVAS extending to the distal aortic arch. Four of these patients also had pulmonary valve stenosis with or without pulmonary artery disease. One child (patient 4) in this group had severe cardiomyopathy with aortic and mitral regurgitation.
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Two patients (group 3) had SVAS with a mean systolic gradient of 66.0 mm Hg and LMCA fusiform narrowing extending into the left anterior descending artery on cardiac catheterization(Fig 1
). The adult patient in group 3 (patient 9) also had a dysplastic aortic valve with aortic insufficiency. Both group 3 patients had SVAS limited to the ascending aorta. Five of the 9 patients reviewed for this study had Williams syndrome.
Operative management
All patients underwent simultaneous relief of SVAS and LMCA stenosis with cardiopulmonary bypass, moderate hypothermia, and antegrade crystalloid cardioplegic arrest. Topical cooling was also used. In each patient, an oblique aortotomy was performed above the aortic sinuses on the anterior surface of the aorta to allow inspection of the sinuses of Valsalva and aortic valve. It was thereby possible to verify the expected morphologic characteristics and evaluate the effect of asymmetric sinus deformity on the aortic valve cusps.
In group 1 patients (LMCA ostial narrowing) the aortotomy was extended in a spiral fashion to the left and posteriorly into the LMCA ostium(Fig 2, A). Minimal dissection between the pulmonary artery and aorta afforded excellent exposure. This incision resulted in release of the SVAS and ostial LMCA narrowing. A spatulated pointed patch of bovine or native pericardium was subsequently used to close the defect. Running 7-0 polypropylene suture was used to approximate the patch to the LMCA and the aortic wall. The patch was tapered to close the aortic defect(Fig 2
, B).
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Concomitant procedures were patch arterioplasty of the main, left, or right pulmonary arteries (4 patients), closure of a persistent foramen ovale (1 patient), ligation of a persistent ductus arteriosus (1 patient), and aortic valve replacement (1 patient).
Data
Patient clinical charts, operative and diagnostic reports of cardiac catheterization, and echocardiograms were reviewed retrospectively. Follow-up consisted in reviewing all last visits to attending pediatric or adult cardiologists that included Doppler echocardiographic assessment or postoperative heart catheterization. One patient (patient 9) was lost to follow-up after he moved to another country. Mean length of follow-up (excluding the 1 early death) was 54.8 months with a range of 6 to 97 months.
| Results |
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All surviving patients underwent follow-up echocardiography with or without cardiac catheterization at a mean of 54.8 months (range 697 months). A significant reduction of the systolic supravalvular gradient to 10 mm Hg or less was achieved in all but 1 patient. The child with the residual supravalvular aortic gradient (patient 3) was originally treated with patch augmentation limited to the ascending aorta and LMCA ostium. Early follow-up catheterization revealed a residual gradient at the level of the aortic arch, and she subsequently underwent extended patch aortoplasty of the arch and proximal descending aorta 6 months after the first operation.
Two patients required further interventions for recurrent pulmonary artery/pulmonary valve disease. Patient 2 required balloon dilatation for bilateral peripheral pulmonary artery stenosis 65 months after the operation, and patient 5 required a right ventricularpulmonary artery homograft for infundibular and main pulmonary artery stenosis 21 months after the operation.
The mean ejection fraction at 1 postoperative month for the 8 surviving patients was 68% (range 50%-72%) and at a mean follow-up of 54.8 months was 65% (range 45%-70%). Five patients who had left ventricular hypertrophy by electrocardiographic voltage criteria (patients 1, 2, 6, 7, and 8) before the operation had subsequent normal electrocardiographic findings during the follow-up period. Long-term study of aortic valve function in all surviving patients by serial echocardiograms revealed trace aortic valve incompetence in 2 infants (patients 5 and 7) at postoperative weeks 97 and 65, respectively.
All surviving patients are currently free of angina. The 7 children who underwent surgical repair have normal growth parameters and exercise tolerance. The 1 adult patient returned to work as a laborer. There have been no late deaths.
| Discussion |
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Approximately 80% of the blood supply to the left ventricle is delivered through the LMCA.
9 Critical narrowing of this vessel is one of the most lethal forms of heart disease and is uncommon in children.
10 In this small series, we report a classification scheme for three anatomic forms of LMCA obstruction associated with SVAS(Fig 4). Type I LMCA stenosis is a direct result of near-circumferential narrowing from medial wall hypertrophy in the first few millimeters of the artery at its aortic origin. Type II LMCA obstruction results from fusion of the free edges of the left coronary cusp to the aortic wall, effectively isolating the sinus of Valsalva and coronary ostium from the lumen of the aorta. In type III disease, diffuse long-segment narrowing of the LMCA to the bifurcation is present.
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We believe it is imperative both to restore the coronary blood flow and to reconstruct the aortic root in patients with SVAS whose cases are complicated by obstruction of the left coronary ostium. The surgical approach used for correction of these two entities depends on the anatomic configuration of LMCA narrowing. Patients with disease limited to the ostium of the LMCA may be treated by combined aortoplasty and ostioplasty. We found that excellent exposure obtained by the anterior approach allows a thorough inspection of the LMCA before incising into its ostium. There was no need in these patients to divide the pulmonary artery for exposure, as has been previously reported.
20 LMCA surgical ostioplasty with native or bovine pericardium restored physiologic perfusion of the left coronary tree, and extension of the patch into the stenotic aortic region relieved the SVAS component of the disease.
The technique of ostioplasty of the LMCA in adults is not a new concept, having been first reported in 1965 when Sabiston and coworkers
21 enlarged an LMCA ostium with a pericardial autograft patch in a young woman with fibrocalcific plaque. In 1970 Najafi, Escamilla, and Clark
22 reported the first transaortic saphenous vein patch ostioplasty for an iatrogenic left main stenosis in a young woman after a valve operation. Subsequent series in adult patients reported by Hitchcock,
23 Sullivan,
24 Briffa,
25 and their coworkers with saphenous vein patches and autologus pericardial patches confirm good long-term patency rates of the LMCA with long-term survival similar to that of patients undergoing coronary artery bypass for LMCA stenosis. In our series, we used native pericardium for patching the LMCA in 5 patients and bovine pericardium for patching the LMCA in only 1 patient. Given the small number of patients in this series, it was not possible to determine whether one type of LMCA patch material offered better patency than another patch material.
The anatomy of some patients does not favor the ostioplastic enlargement of the LMCA. Infants with SVAS and adherence of the left valve cusp to the aortic sinus wall (type II) were treated in this series with excision of the coronary leaflet and anterior aortoplasty. Aortic valve replacement, as has been reported for this condition,
26 was not necessary. The LMCA ostia in these children were morphologically normal in appearance and size. Obstruction to left main flow was due to exclusion of the coronary ostium from the aortic lumen by the fused valve leaflet.
A small subset of our patients had diffuse LMCA narrowing extending at least to the bifurcation of the vessel. These 2 patients were treated with aortoplasty and coronary artery bypass grafting. In the series of left main surgical angioplasties reported by Dion and associates
27 in adults, diffuse disease involving the LMCA bifurcation was a well-defined contraindication for patch angioplasty. We chose vein conduits for these patients because of the concern of possible aortic arch disease in patients with SVAS.
In summary, this report describes the cases of 9 patients with SVAS in whom LMCA obstruction was present. Although our series is small, the early results of direct surgical intervention for proximal coronary obstruction are promising. It is important to identify patients having SVAS with LMCA obstruction, particularly when symptoms of angina or electrocardiographic changes of ischemia are present. The surgical approach to each patient should be determined by the anatomic type of LMCA stenosis/obstruction present.
| References |
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