Very Interesting (Baby born with external heart)
this was really interesting...if u have time read it all.
Baby born with external heart beats odds
FRANK THORNE IN SYDNEY and ANGIE BROWN
Key points
• Surgeons operated after Caesarean to place heart back in Charli’s chest
• Doctors used clingfilm to protect baby’s heart during procedure
• Infant, now six weeks, born with the rare condition ectopia cordis
Key quote
"She doesn't realise the fuss she’s caused, but Charli’s lucky to be here. She has beaten all the odds, so we can’t thank the medical staff enough" - Peter Southern, father
Story in full DOCTORS who saved the life of a baby born with her heart outside her body yesterday revealed they used domestic clingfilm during emergency treatment to cover her heart to prevent the premature infant from dying.
Six-week-old Charli Southern, who is recovering in hospital after undergoing two operations to rectify her rare heart condition, has beaten survival odds of more than two million to one, doctors said.
The baby, suffering from the chest-abnormality condition ectopia cordis, was kept alive by consultants who covered her heart in the plastic food wrap to protect it from infection and prevent it drying up, before they operated on the baby’s gaping wound.
Charli was born seven weeks premature with a large hole in her chest that allowed her heart to "flap around" outside her body.
Doctors decided that because of the pressure building around her exposed heart, she had to be delivered by emergency Caesarean section to save her life.
Within hours of Charli’s birth, doctors performed a delicate operation to place the external part of her heart, which was poking through her abdomen, back into her chest. They then closed the gap with existing skin and protective Gore-tex.
Also suffering from kidney failure and a potentially fatal chest infection, Charli has amazed doctors, who said they had to reach for their medical textbooks to treat her.
Speaking yesterday from the special-care nursery at Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, Brisbane, Australia, Peter Southern praised the doctors who saved his daughter’s life.
He said: "She’s a little battler, all right.
"She’ll need more surgery when she is older, to reconstruct part of her sternum that’s missing, but we are very optimistic about Charli’s future.
"She doesn't realise the fuss she’s caused, but Charli’s lucky to be here. She has beaten all the odds, so we can’t thank the medical staff enough."
Mr Southern said his daughter had become something of a celebrity among the staff. "Everybody at the hospital has been phenomenal, even though Charlie did have them reaching for their medical reference books - which worried us at first," he said. "It’s amazing what good medical science and technology can do."
Charli’s mother, Peta Steedman, 29, described her daughter’s survival as a miracle.
"It was touch-and-go at times and I shed plenty of tears," Ms Steedman said. She said her daughter was rare among sufferers of the condition in that her heart itself had no problems.
"She’s got the heart of a lion," Ms Steedman said.
After a spell in intensive care, Charli is now able to breathe on her own, unaided by a ventilator.
She has begun breast- feeding and is gaining weight so quickly she could be home in St George, Queensland, with her two-year-old brother, Max, in a few weeks.
Dr Carol Portman, an obstetrician, said she had never seen anything like it when she first saw on a monitor Charli’s heart beating from outside her chest cavity.
"We certainly weren’t expecting what we found. It was very easy to see something protruding through the chest wall. It was Charli’s heart. Her chances of survival were one in a couple of million. We expect Charli to run around like a normal child. We don’t see that many babies with this condition who make it this far."
Dr Mark Davies, the heart specialist who performed the operation to put Charli’s heart back in place, said: "I think she has done remarkably well. Her recovery has been startling." Causes of the rare birth defect, in which the chest fails to close over all or part of the heart, remain a medical mystery. One theory is that it could be the result of a strange hiccup in foetal development as early as three weeks into a pregnancy.
Professor Martin Elliot, a paediatric cardiac surgeon at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, said the family would have had a terrible shock when they saw the condition of their newborn baby.
"It would have looked strange with the chest wide open and the heart flapping around."
"It is a very rare condition which has an incident rate of five to eight per million live births.
"What makes this even more amazing is that this little baby has a normal heart. Around 70 per cent of babies born with this condition have abnormal hearts, which have to be corrected as well.
"Whilst in the womb the baby’s heart would have been bathing in fluids so the doctors did the correct thing here by keeping it from drying out using clingfilm once she was born.
He said doctors would have used ultrasound to check the heart and used wet swabs to prevent the heart from dehydrating. He added: "Skin can then be loosened at the sides and be joined together over the hole. A separate bone-graft operation will have been used to join the breast bone across the chest to protect the heart."
Pankaj Mankad, a cardiac surgeon at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and a former paediatric cardiac surgeon at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital For Sick Children, said the condition was so rare he had only seen one case in 22 years.
"Fortunately the child will not feel pain when it is born with this birth defect but there is a high fatality rate so this baby is very fortunate.
"It is extremely rare and it is very important that the proper surgery is administered.
"It depends how big the abnormality is, but she will have some scars and indentations in her chest when she is older," said Mr Mankad.
"She will be able to lead a normal life, although she might be restricted from playing some sports because her chest will be soft. It is very special to have survived such a condition."