Treatment for Transposition of the Great Arteries (TGA) Animated Videos

Balloon Atrial Septostomy to Treat Transposition of the Great Arteries (TGA)

You can advance that balloon up through the vein into the heart, under x-ray guidance, which is what catheterization is. And then you position the balloon across one side of this wall between the upper two chambers, you inflate the balloon, and you pull it back very quickly. And you literally rip a hole, and that allows the blue and the red blood to mix.

Arterial Switch Operation to Treat Transposition of the Great Arteries (TGA)

So the principles of the operation are to switch the vessels in the coronary arteries so they're coming off the right ventricles. And, practically, what you do is divide the aorta directly above where the coronary arteries would implant, and you actually cut the coronary arteries out.

Cutting out very small buttons of tissue of where the coronary arteries insert into the aorta.

Once the coronary arteries are cut out and both vessels coming out of the heart are divided, you can switch those two vessels and put them in their proper location. And then you can sew those coronary arteries back into the new aorta in the proper location.

The vessels themselves are switched, but the base of the vessels, which contain the valves that lead to those vessels, remain on each of the ventricles. So, in fact, when you do an arterial switch operation, you bring the aorta over to the left ventricle, but you're putting that over what has developed and originated as the pulmonary valve.