On Tue, 8 Jun 2004 23:17:24 +0200, "Ashirus"
usenet-replyATashirusnwNO_SPAM.freeserve.co.ukDeleteFollo
wrote:

Hi. My wife is pregnant with her first child. I'm 22, she's 20, she's now in
her 30th week and the 21st wk ultrasound found that she has a single
umbilical artery (SUA) and so we were told to get a foetal echocardiography.
This was performed yesterday and the foetus was discovered to have 2 to 3
Ventricular Septal Defects (VSD) of "small-to-moderate" size:

to quote the relevant bit of his report:
"Normal right and left ventricular size and function, 2-3 muscular VSDs - A
3mm apical, 2mm mid-muscular and possibly another 1mm mid-high muscular VSD.
6MMHG shunt is seen (no PS)."
the rest of his report reports everything's fine.

The doctor said that this may be a sign of one of the "syndromes".

The 21st week ultrasound revealed no other defects or deformities, so we
want to know what the chances of the child being born being with a syndrome
is, given these factors? Is the doctor right? Should we worry?

Does anyone know the chances of this number (2-3) of defects of these sizes
at this "age" closing spontaneously either before or after birth?

My son's cardiologist says that there are a lot more heart defects
that aren't related to syndromes (apart from Downs Syndrome) than the
other way around. If they don't know specifically what syndrome they
are testing for there is no point in doing genetic testing, it's not
like casting a net to see what they can come up with - instead they
need to look for specific problems and see if they can find a match
for them. That's one of the reasons why it's so difficult to get a
diagnosis of the less common syndromes, they need to suspect it and go
looking to confirm their suspicions.

As far as the spontaneous closure of VSD's, this is certainly possible
if they are small enough. Larger ones can sometimes be closed with
closed heart surgery during a cardiac catheter while the biggest need
open heart surgery. There is a previous poster here who was last seen
at misc.kids called Michelle Spina whose second child had her VSD
closed at about 4 months old. There's a post in Google from her that
might be helpful for you if you want to know about surgical
correction:
http://tinyurl.com/2kz5u


www.heartcenteronline.com is also a very useful place to find
information. Good luck with it all, being the parent to a heart kid
isn't easy but they are amazingly resilient.

--
Cheryl
Mum to Shrimp (11 Mar 99), Thud (4 Oct 00)
and Mischief (30 Jul 02)