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Antenatal Screening

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Continuing with an affected pregnancy

Interview AN43

Interview AN43

Background: Diagnosed during pregnancy (32 weeks). Parents marital status: Married. Occupation: Mother-Civil Servant, Father-Police Officer. Other children: Two older children and a younger sister. The family live close by to a specialist hospital.

Brief outline:Their son was diagnosed with Hypoplastic Left Ventricle, VSD, Mitral Atresia, Pulmonary Atresia, Right Atrial Isomerism, aorta arising from the right ventricle, TAPVD and Bilateral Superior Vena Cava and no spleen. Treatment: modified BT shunt (6 days old) open heart surgery (3 months and 6 months), 1st stage Fontan (10 months). Further surgery planned. Current medication: Warfarin, Enanapril, Frusemide, Penicillin. More of this interview can be seen on the DIPEX Congenital Heart Disease site as interview CHD07.

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She was glad they discovered their son's heart condition late in pregnancy, so they had less time to worry.
Print When he was diagnosed, how many weeks pregnant were you? About 30, 32 weeks. And for some people finding out that late on would perhaps have been a bad thing, but we actually felt, in one respect, that it was better that it wasn't picked up earlier because we had sort of 6 weeks of worry, as opposed to, you know, the whole pregnancy. And once he was diagnosed the cardiologist was very informative about the condition that he had and what both the short term and the long term outlook was. And that, well, the outlook was quite negative really, but I felt that that was good that they gave you an honest view, in that anything sort of after that was a bonus really. And I mean, he's done better than we ever could have imagined. And I think that it was good that they were honest, although it's hard to accept at the time. So to give somebody false hope, you know, would have been worse really.

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