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Anyone's baby had a VP shunt placed?
Can you tell me your experience? DS has an arachnoid cyst on his brain that is growing despite a previous fenestration surgery in March. He is havine a VP shunt placed on Friday. I am nervous and wondering what to expect as far as the actual surgery and recovery time.
Thanks so much!
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Re: Anyone's baby had a VP shunt placed?
My son has double VP shunts and a subdural shunt. DS's first shunt surgery was a single shunt and it was a very easy surgery. Basically he went in and was out within an hour, came back with the incision shaped like a question mark or a "c" on his head, and of course the small incision in his stomach. DS was very alert following surgery and didn't seem to be in too much pain. Of course, after his first shunt was placed, it was determined by a CT later that day that he needed the other shunt on the other side, so he wasn't quite up to par from that. I think he would have done better if he hadn't needed the second shunt, so if your son is just having the one placed, it should be a relatively easy surgery.
DS's subdural shunt was placed on a Friday at like 2:00p and we went home that next morning. The third shunt seemed to bother him the most. He wouldn't lay his head down because he was in pain, so after we got him home we had to hold him until he feel asleep and then lay him down. He finally got over that in a couple of days. I think it was a little psychological too, though, because at that point, he had had several brain surgeries and I think he was starting to associate them making him lay down with going into surgery.
As far as recovery, obviously his head will hurt, the stomach incision will be pretty sore too, and he'll have staples that you'll have to keep antibiotic ointment on. The staples will stay in for about 10 days, then they will take them out. DS hated them taking them, so I took the staple remover kit and did it myself at home (with doctor's approval). With them trying to remove them, he screamed and cried and fought it, with me, he just laid there and acted like it didn't hurt at all and I removed all 18 of the head staples in aobut 2 minutes. Just be sure to keep up on the pain meds, set a schedule and don't fall behind on it (they will probably just give you Tylenol or Motrin).
So is your son having the shunt placed into the cyst or is the cyst blocking up his flow of CSF? I assume since you said VP, the CSF is blocked, but I don't know a lot about the arachnoid cysts, so I didn't know if maybe they shunted them also??? I hope everything goes smoothly for your son! If you have any questions, I'll try to check in again later tonight and tomorrow.
Thank you so much for the info. The shunt will be placed in the cyst because the growth of the cyst is blocking CSF flow.
Do the shunts seem to bother your son now? My husband and I are worried about him having headaches or being sore and him not being able to tell us. Obviously it will be sore for the first week or so, but I'm wondering about long term. Thank you again!
The shunts absolutely do not bother him now. They are a part of him now, and as long as they are functioning correctly, they will never be removed. I guess you could compare it to like having an IUD in. You know it's in there, but you can't feel it and it doesn't bother you. You will be able to feel the shunt running under his scalp and behind his ear, but that's about it.
If he starts having what they call a malfunction, you will know it. He will start vomiting, or sleeping the day away, he will most likely have a headache, and he will be very irritable and you will be able to pick up on this. We experienced a malfunction after our son's g-tube was put in. Apparently it's like a one in a million chance that the shunts could get infected this way, but his did. After that we had the shunts taken out and externalized for a week to clear the CSF of the infection, then we had the shunts put back in and we have had no problem from them since.
Our son's shunt is not programmable, so if for some reason it started over- or under-draining (which is extremely unlikely this far out), or if for some reason it got infected (which again, is extremely unlikely now that we're so far out from surgery), we'd have to have that shunt removed and a new one put it. Sometimes they do have to do some messing around before they get the shunt exactly right, but our son's was done really well and we've never had a problem out of it (besides the g-tube incident). Our pediatric neurosurgeon was very upfront about his personal infection rate, 2% (national average is 8%), so we were really confident with him.
Anyway, I think you will probably need to give him pain meds for at least three days following the surgery, possibly a little more depending on his pain tolerance level. Usually by day 3, DS is back to his normal ways entirely. Your son will probably start feeling a ton better after they reduce the pressure up there. If you've noticed he's been pretty fussy lately, this surgery will probably help that.
I was going to mention also, is your son already on seizure meds from the cyst? I know that sometimes they put kids on anti-seizure meds after a head surgery just because messing in the brain can sometimes trigger seizures. I'd definitely ask about that if your son isn't already on the meds. The first time DS had his brain opened up for a tumor biopsy, they told us they would put him on antiseizure meds and they didn't and he had a 9 minute Grand Mal seizure that liked to have scared the living daylights out of me.
So I have to ask, for my own curiosity, will this drain help to reduce the size of the cyst? I mean, bless his heart, I'd hate to think of the thing continuing to increase in size. I know that can't feel good on his poor little head.