BT shunt

A BT Shunt also known as a Blalock-Thomas-Taussig Shunt is a surgical procedure used to help increase pulmonary blood flow for palliation in duct-dependent cyanotic heart defects like pulmonary atresia. This is a significant, common cause of Blue Baby Syndrome. Surgery For Baby Blue Syndrome is performed on babies who have nitrate levels that have been known to cause a potentially fatal blood disorder in infants under age 6 months. This condition is called Methemoglobinemia in which there is a significant reduction in the blood’s oxygen-carrying capacity.

Baby Blue Syndrome is specifically treated by inserting a BT Shunt. This has rapidly spread as the standard of treatment worldwide for Tetralogy Of Fallot. Heart Defects In Babies can, most often, like Baby Blue Syndrome be corrected in one surgery in early infancy. This is one of the most common birth defects involving any range of congenital heart defects.

Blue Baby Disease is a heart complication also caused by methemoglobinemia which is widely believed to be caused by nitrate contamination in groundwater resulting in oxygen capacities of the infant being significantly decreased. Blue Baby Heart Surgery was invented in 1944, and has subsequently saved many babies in the decades since. A BT Shunt is inserted to help the heart function properly and help the child to become more viable into the future.