Mateo's heart condition, explained..

Did you know that cardio vascular diseases (CVDs) are responsible for nearly half of all non-communicative deaths worldwide? In May 2012 world leaders got together to pledge their commitment to building awareness and helping reduce the amount of deaths from cardiovascular disease by creating World Heart Day.

This campaign encourages us to make the commitment to advocate and create awareness of the ways in which we can encourage others and ourselves to lead a healthy life-style. Some ways we can do this are cooking and eating healthier meals, exercising, saying no to smoking, and lowering our cholesterol. As well it is a promise to advocate to our policymakers to support policies that promote healthy hearts and to invest in workplaces that support heart health!

Mateo was born with a Congenital Heart Condition called Tetralogy of Fallot (TOF) with Pulmonary Atresia and MAPCA’s. This sounds like a riddle the first time you hear it, as it is a very complex heart disease, but I will try to simply it for you, so you can better understand Mateo’s heart challenges. The diagrams below will give you a better understanding of what a typical heart looks like and what Mateo’s heart looks like. Okay, so basic science, the heart is a muscle that is divided into several chambers, it’s main function is to use those chambers which connect to veins and arteries to distribute blood throughout the body, including to and from the lungs to facilitate the oxygenation of your blood.

Typical Heart

Mateo's Condition

Mateo has 5 different heart defects:

1. Ventricular Septal Defect (VSD). The VSD is a hole between the left and right ventricles, allowing blood to pass freely between them.

2. Pulmonary Atresia. In some cases this is a narrowing in the connection of the pulmonary artery to the heart, however in Mateo’s heart, there is no connection to the pulmonary artery at all.

3. A thickened right ventrical wall.

4. The aorta is shifted more over the centre of the heart.

5. Major aortopulmonary collateral arteries (MAPCAs). MAPCAs are the Mateo’s magic arteries that were formed when he was still in the womb. They only form in some babies with TOF. They allow unoxygenated blood travelling through the aorta to mix with oxygenated blood coming from the lungs.

As I posted previously, Mateo has already had two heart surgeries. These surgeries helped re-direct the blood flow from the heart to and from his lungs; though he still has all 5 defects and will need to have one, or more surgeries in the future to help repair his heart, so it can work as close to a typical heart as possible.

Team Mateo would like to encourage you to take care of your heart, and encourage others to do the same, as it is very precious <3.

More on World Heart Day: https://www.world-heart-federation.org/world-heart-day/about-whd/

More on Tetralogy of Fallot: https://www.aboutkidshealth.ca/Article?contentid=1621&language=English