More Information from Grandpa Cannon

Here is Grandpa Wayne's description of Tanner's condition:
Tanner is settled in at PCMC. The tests all show that he has good circulation and his body is getting enough oxygen and nutrients. He is stable. He is in much better shape than most babies with this condition when they arrive at the hospital.
There are new concerns. It turns out there are 4 problems besides the coarctation that could not be determined with the less precise equipment used at a regular hospital. He is in the cardiac ICU at PCMC. He has a good cardiologist and intensivist.
The new concerns are 1) the whole aortic arch is a little too narrow. It will all need to be repaired by placing a graft to make it larger, 2 and 3) The hole in the lower chamber of the heart is quite a bit larger than expected. This has problems of its own. But also with a hole there part of the septum (the wall in the heart) has been like a window drape, kind of hanging free in the flow of the blood and has blocked the aortic valve. As a result, or maybe totally unrelated, the aortic valve is too small. It looks healthy, but there is concern if the aortic valve is large enough to handle all the blood flow from the left ventricle. If they do the repair and it is to small he will go into heart failure and need another major surgery. It is borderline and thus they are weighing whether to risk fixing him or doing a less helpful temporary surgery and then a follow up in 6 months. Anyway, the hole (called VSD) will have to be repaired at the time of surgery. This means that Tanner will not only require a repair on his aorta, but an incision in his heart (open heart surgery) to repair the hole, and pull the septum out of the way 4) The hole in the upper chamber is large enough they may have fix that at the same time.
The experts will be discussing this over the next couple of days what they will do and when. So there you go.