This means that red blood doesn’t get pumped to the body. The only way it can is through the duct between the lung artery (pulmonary artery) and the main body artery (aorta). So it’s the purple mixed blood getting pumped to the body instead of red oxygen filled blood.
What does cyanosis mean?
Some children, teenager and adults with a single ventricle have periods of time when they are cyanosed. In most cases it will happen because there is less oxygen in the blood than normal. When you have a mixture of blue blood, with no oxygen, mixing with red blood, filled with oxygen, the mixture means that there is less oxygen than normal flowing around the body. We call this purple blood. When you are cyanosed you may have a blue tinge to your lips and fingers, you may be a bit more breathless than your friends and you may find that you get tired easily.
Below you will find an animation about HLHS – A visual guide to help you understand the information on this page.
Do you have questions? It’s absolutely okay if reading this has led to more questions. Your doctors can explain the what and the how. If you need someone to explain the why? We can try to do that next but it’s not that simple.
The heart is fully formed in an unborn baby by the end of the third month of pregnancy (whilst still in the mums tummy).
Lots of complex growing goes on in those first three months to make a heart, and the rest of the baby.
We don’t totally know what goes wrong in some babies at that time but we do have a few clues.
- Some families have a history of babies with problems with their hearts when they are born. In these cases there is probably a genetic problem. For more information have a look at the genetics section of our website https://www.lhm.org.uk/hypoplastic-left-heart-syndrome/#genetics
- Some mothers have had health problems during the early part of the pregnancy that can cause a problem with the growth of the heart.
- In most cases there is no reason that anyone can find about why the heart did not form properly. Doctors are still looking and one day we will have a full answer.
The most important thing to remember is that it was no one’s fault that it happened. Sometimes when a baby is growing in the womb (Mums tummy) the growing just does not go right.
We also know that some children with a heart condition also have another genetic condition for example De George Syndrome (22Q deletion). In some genetic conditions there is nearly always a heart problem as one of the differences the genetic condition makes.
Why was the problem not detected during pregnancy?
It is possible to detect a HLHS during pregnancy, but it might not be very obvious during the scans your mom had because of the size or position the baby was in. Sometimes the heart condition can become clearer to see later in the pregnancy after routine scans have been performed.
Why is my condition treatable but not correctable?
Doctors have worked hard to develop a different way for the undeveloped parts within your heart to pass blood so it circulates around our body. Even though they have done this they are not able to make a ventricle yet so after your treatment you will still only have one working pump. This is why your heart condition is called palliative.
