What are the treatments for patent ductus arteriosus?

There are more and more diseases happening around children in life, and patent ductus arteriosus is one of them. When a child is sick, he will be very painful. Parents feel very distressed and don’t know how to deal with it. So, what are the treatments for patent ductus arteriosus?

1. Drug treatment

The main role of drug therapy is to prevent and treat infective endocarditis, respiratory tract infection and heart failure. For premature infants with patent ductus arteriosus, some drugs (such as indomethacin, aspirin, etc.) can be used to inhibit the synthesis of prostaglandins, shrinking or closing the ductus.

2. Interventional treatment

Interventional therapy is a minimally invasive surgery, the most common of which is patent ductus arteriosus closure. It is currently the most common method for treating patent ductus arteriosus and is suitable for all types of patients with patent ductus arteriosus. The method is roughly to use a special wire to clamp a "special patch" into the heart, reach the patent ductus arteriosus, and use the patch to close the unclosed area. This method has the advantages of small surgical trauma, high safety, simple operation, few complications, and short hospitalization time.

3. Surgical treatment

Surgical ligation and cutting and suturing. The ideal age is 4-15 years old. If the disease progresses rapidly or there are repeated respiratory tract infections, heart failure, uncontrolled infective endocarditis, congestive heart failure that is ineffective with medical treatment, and symptomatic patent ductus arteriosus, the diagnosis is clear and contraindications are excluded. In principle, emergency surgical treatment should be performed as soon as possible.

Surgical method:

(1) Duct arterial ligation or clamping: The surgery can be performed by entering the left thoracic cavity through a posterolateral chest incision or video-assisted thoracoscopy.

(2) Ductus arteriosus cutting and suturing: After clamping the ductus arteriosus with two duct clamps, the edges of the aorta and pulmonary artery are continuously sutured while cutting between the two clamps.

(3) Internal suture method: under general anesthesia and low-temperature extracorporeal circulation, the heart blood circulation is blocked, and the ductus arteriosus incision is exposed and directly sutured through the pulmonary artery incision.

(4) Catheter occlusion: using a cardiac catheter to release an appropriate occlusion device to occlude the ductus arteriosus.