Thursday, April 16, 2009

Good News

Shawn had an appt today actually with a second thoracic surgeon regarding a hiatal hernia he has. (wow that was a lot of H's)

Apparently some of his decrease in lung function could be attributed to reflux/micro aspirations. I don't think they found anything in particular just trying to cover their bases. Prior to transplant they did some testing and it was determined that he had only a very minor amt of reflux but I guess sometimes after surgery it can be worse...I'm guessing due to the manipulation of his guts for lack of a better word. So anyhoo he'll be going in for more GI related tests next week.
Shawn has five hernias in total so it'll be a while before he is all buttoned up.

The good news is that for whatever reason they actually did a set of PFT's and his FEV1% has increased to 50% from just 36% a week ago. Actually now that I look at the two print-outs I see that they used a slightly higher "predicted" so he is even a little better than 50%. I'm no math whiz but now I'm determined to figure it out exactly.

Well his FEV1% in liters 1.66 and today he is 2.32 so although not the big numbers I'd like to see he is still moving in the right direction!!!!

Tomorrow he has surgery again, just the dilatation this time.

6 comments:

Christy said...

Duke has been doing Nissen Fundoplications on just about all transplant patients ever since they did extensive research on the correlation between chronic rejection and reflux 9 or 10 years ago. I had my wrap about 3 weeks post-tx.

Amy said...

Those is some good numbers!!!!

Nope not fabulous but getting there!!!!

Hope everything goes well and he starts mending perfectly woot!

Piper said...

it shouldn't be tough to figure out the exact difference. take the absolute amount of the second PFT and divide it by the absolute amount of the predicted fev1 from the first.

so, for example, if he had 1.76 liters out of a predicted 3 last time (just random numbers there) and 2.0 liters with a predicted value of 4 liters this time, just take the 2.0 and divide it by 3. that should give you a percent that you can actually compare to the earier value.

wow that was ridiculous to explain considering it's such a simple concept. good job shawn on the awesome pfts! hope the next round of surgery goes well!

Elizabeth said...

Yay! Here's to going in the right direction. Hope the drama with your firends is calming down; sounded misrable.

Kim said...

Hey, congratulations on the good news Tina!! I'm so glad Shawn's pfts are coming up.... if you ever want some company to take a walk on the beach, i'd be more than happy to be your escort. hope to see you guys soon! <3 Kim

Tina said...

Hey thanks for the formula...sometimes I don't know where my mind is.
So his FEV1% is actually 51%. I'll take the 1%!