Abstract
A 12-year-old boy with tetralogy of Fallot was evaluated for increasing cyanosis and exercise intolerance. The patient had a right Blalock-Taussig shunt operation 11 years previously and a left modified Blalock-Taussig shunt operation one year previously. After demonstration of hypoplastic pulmonary arteries, the stenosed right Blalock-Taussig shunt and the totally occluded, left modified Blalock-Taussig shunt were successfully dilated with a 7-mm-diameter angioplasty balloon resulting in a 5-mm-diameter patent shunt. We believe that, when possible, balloon dilatation angioplasty of stenosed Blalock-Taussig shunts is a reasonable and safe alternative to surgery.
Copyright and license
Copyright © 1996 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.
