Services and Programs

Children's Heart Center at Strong

Neonatal/Congenital Heart Surgery

Congenital heart disease is a general term referring to defects occurring in the heart, valves or arteries. As there are numerous types of congenital heart disease, likewise there are numerous procedures for correcting and/or treating these defects. At Golisano Children's Hospital at Strong, our surgeons specialize in the surgical procedures most effective in correcting these conditions, offering their patients the promise of a long life.

Types of Congenital Heart Surgery

Surgery becomes necessary when non-invasive procedures fail to correct a heart defect. There are two types of congenital heart surgery:

• Reparative congenital heart surgery: this procedure is used to correct the heart defect

• Palliative congenital heart surgery: a surgical procedure that relieves pain but doesn’t necessarily correct the actual defect.

• Repairing or closing ventricular or atrial septal defects and atrioventricular valves. This is done with stitches or a patch (artificial or made from the patient's own tissue). More about atrial and ventricular septal defects

• Stretching or widening the pulmonic valve and closing a ventricular septal defect to correct Tetralogy of the Fallot

• Moving the great arteries and coronary arteries back to their normal position to cure transposition of the great arteries

• Widening a narrow aorta to treat coarctation

• Blalock-Taussig procedure. Here, our surgeons insert a tube to connect the aorta to the pulmonary artery to increase the flow of blood to the lungs.

• Fontan procedure. This procedure helps patients with a single ventricle by allowing deoxygenated blood flow into the lungs and avoiding the heart. The one heart ventricle then pumps oxygenated blood.

• Pulmonary artery band. A band is placed around the pulmonary artery in order to restrict the flow of blood to the lungs.