Heart Surgery - Adults

This is an op about Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which shall now be abbreviated to WPW to save my poor fingers from more typing than necessary! This is a (very impressively named) heart problem that I was born with. In this op I hope to give you some information both about the condition and to tell you about my personal experiences with it, from diagnosis through to treatment via surgery (hence the category ? the closest I could find). *What is it?* WPW is named for the three doctors who discovered it. In 1930 Drs Wolff, Parkinson and White found a distinct ...  Read the complete review

Twelve months ago the outlook for my best friend Nicola and her family looked very bleak indeed. She was just 19 but had been on the waiting list for a heart/lung transplant for almost seven years. Her condition was deteriorating rapidly. She was on oxygen almost constantly each day, needed a wheelchair to get around and was having home care for her daily needs. We all felt that we were losing a freind/daughter and from a personal point of view it was absolutely heart wrenching to see the effects this was having on her folks. The organ donor situation was severely affecting the number of donor organs available for transplantation. ...  Read the complete review

This opinion is looking specifically at an invesigation required prior to any form of by-pass surgery, whether cardiac or for another part of the body. It is called angiography. I was an X-ray nurse for many years working at both Papworth hospital?s Surgical X-ray department and then in the X-ray department of the Royal Free Hospital, so feel that I am able to give some insight into angiography. **Meaning of Angiography** This is basically an injection of radio-opaque material injected into the blood stream, allowing the blood vessels to be seen under x-ray. This dye is not radioactive, as some people have been led to believe. (This is a ...  Read the complete review