Recently, a 1-year-old boy with congenital heart disease and congenital right diaphragmatic palsy underwent successful corrective surgery in our cardiac surgery department and was discharged from the hospital after a good recovery. Liu Luqi, Department of Cardiac Surgery, Shandong Qianfo Mountain Hospital
Professor Liu Luqi, chief surgeon, said that congenital diaphragmatic dysplasia is a rare congenital malformation that causes significant elevation of the diaphragm on the affected side, affecting lung lobe expansion and thus respiratory function, and this defect also makes it difficult to apply a ventilator after heart surgery. If the two malformations were not corrected at the same time as the cardiac surgery, it would be impossible to discontinue the ventilator after the cardiac surgery, but the conventional cardiac surgery incision could not be combined with the diaphragm surgery. Faced with the challenge of simultaneous surgery, our cardiac surgery team decided, after consultation and thorough discussion, to adopt a minimally invasive right thoracic intercostal incision to complete both surgeries simultaneously. On the premise of ensuring the safety of the surgery, after the joint efforts of cardiac surgery, anesthesiology, the operating room and pediatric surgery, the operation was successfully performed and the child was off the ventilator on the day of surgery. This simultaneous operation reduced trauma, accelerated recovery, and filled a gap in the field of extracardiac surgery in our hospital. (Luping)