Results of the Bronchoscopy

This morning Lynnea had a bronchoscopy to try to figure out why she's having such a difficult time weaning off the ventilator. It turns out that part of her left mainstem bronchus (the airway leading into the left lung) is pinched about 90%. In addition to the narrowness, this part of her bronchus appears to pulse with her heart beat, which means part of her heart is pressing against it, likely causing the narrowing. This isn't a huge surprise; this has been suspected for awhile, but seems to be (or to have gotten) worse than expected. Without fixing this problem, it is not going to be possible to successfully take her off from the ventilator. To fix this, Dr. St. Louis will need to do more heart surgery to move whatever is pressing against the bronchus off from it. Unfortunately, Dr. St. Louis is unable to safely operate on her as long as she continues to have active infections and run persistent fevers. The plan for the moment is to wait another day or two, hoping that all of the antibiotics that Lynnea is on will finally clear up the infections. If she continues to run fevers beyond the next day or two, Dr. St. Louis will most likely need to open part of her chest incision up again to try to drain any remaining fluid that might be collecting there (and isn't draining out the chest tube that she still has in place) and possibly look for other sources of infection in her chest since that's the most likely culprit. He said that he will try to make a decision about what he wants to do by this weekend. For now, Lynnea's ventilator settings have been increased to a PEEP of 10 in order to keep the bronchus open.