What is a Vascular Ring?- Entry Number One

Welcome to Amber's blog. Let's begin by looking at exactly why Amber is having this surgery and what it involves.

Amber has what they call a vascular ring that formed at some point during her early development. A vascular ring is the result of the aorta (your body's biggest artery that feeds into the top of the heart) not forming properly, and this can result in several different types of vascular rings. Amber's actual condition is a right turning aortic arch, but the picture below shows the problem well.

Amber's particular ring is a result of the aorta turning the wrong direction (right instead of left). This results in the aorta and some of the other vessels around it wrapping around the esophagus (food tube) and trachea (wind pipe) - as you can see below.

 The picture above is not Amber's exact problem but very similar. What they will do is cut the green piece shown above out and it should remove the pressure on Amber's trachea and esophagus. Removing this piece is pretty simple according to Dr. Hillman because there is not much blood flowing through this area. In fact your body no longer needs that piece once you are born, as it was only needed during development in order to deliver nutrients from the umbilical cord to the newly forming baby.

The symptoms of a vascular ring include:
Acid reflux (Amber's first year had more food coming up than staying down)
Persistent coughing (another one Amber is good at)
Troubled breathing/asthma symptoms (Amber is on three asthma medications)
Repeated pneumonia's (ONLY three so far this year)

Our doctor discovered this accidentally at her last post pneumonia check where they did a chest X-ray to make sure it was cleared up. The radiologist noticed something weird in a corner of the picture, and an upper GI test, CT Scan, ECG, and more X-rays confirmed this was the case.

For those of you who have the stomach to watch it, the video below shows the actual procedure she will be having. It is even of a patient with the exact same diagnosis as Amber.