Our daughter suffers from spontaneous chylothorax as well as pulmonary stenosis and ASD. She’s had open heart surgery, which was very successful. I was wondering if in the medical world there is any more research being done on whether there is any connection to the chylothorax issues within her lungs to cardiac issues, or if they are totally separate situations?

There’s certainly association with chylothorax and cardiac surgery with individuals who have had open heart surgery who then develop chylothorax. We also know there is an increased prevalence of lymphatic problems in Noonan Syndrome. There is a lot of research going on in terms of the work Sahar is doing and the fact that we can now image lymphatics in a better way. We’ve talked about Noonan’s having some implications for growth and potentially over-growth, over-thickening of vessels. There’s a possibility that certain situations lead to over-growth of lymphatic vessels which then don’t do their job very well. There’s an excellent link now with Philadelphia with Professor Max Itkin who is an expert in interventional radiology to actually get a picture of the whole lymphatics of the body, not just the lower part of the body and then ways to intervene in certain circumstances.