Hi Eileen,

my colleagues and me are currently working with a mom who had heart surgery to 
repair a PDA when she was 3 years old . It was done on her back, not on the 
front - and she has marked breast asymmetry and the baby is gaining slowly (it 
is her second baby and it was the same with her first). Milk is very low from 
the affected breast. Interestingly, her aunt had the same surgery with the same 
impact on breast growth and milk production. So it is not uncommon for heart 
surgery to affect the breast - if there is some nerve damage to the 4th 
intercostal nerve it can have an impact on the nipple sensitivity and on the 
milk production too (in case of our mother it had an impact on breast 
development too).

Although not quite fitting your situation, here is a citation that could be of 
use - it is from the book "Management of Breast Diseases",Ismail Jatoi, Manfred 
Kaufmann © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010:

"Breast and pectoral muscle maldevelopment have
been reported in children who have undergone anterolateral
and posterolateral surgical incisions though the
fourth intercostal space, an approach used for congenital
heart surgery [93] . Anterolateral thoracostomies resulted
in 60% of the patients subsequently having a greater than
20% discrepancy in volume of the breast and pectoral
muscles on the ipsilateral and unaffected sides as reported
in a retrospective study from the Children’s Hospital of
Pittsburgh. Tube thoracostomy is one of the more common
pediatric injuries, and results in scar and fi brous tissue
tethering the breast to the chest wall [22] ."

Chrisina Yaneva
National Association for BF Support
Bulgaria


----- Original Message ----
From: Eileen Ahearn-Shea <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Tue, March 22, 2011 3:36:41 PM
Subject: mother with open heart surgery

I have a first time mother who had open heart surgery in her early
twenties, about ten years ago.    She has no risk factos that I can
find for lack of milk yet she produces less than 250 ml ( 8 ounces) per
day.  Has anyone else ever run into this?   She does have some reduced
sensation in her nipples.   Eileen

Eileen Ahearn Shea, BSc, IBCLC
Clinical Lecturer, Family Health Team
Department of Family Medicine
McMaster University Faculty of Medicine

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