Baby survives after being born with heart outside her body
A baby born Nov. 22 in Leicester, England, has a chance to beat the odds and survive after a rare congenital condition caused her to be delivered a month early with her heart beating outside her chest cavity.
The condition, ectopia cordis, affects about one in every 126,000 babies, 90 percent of whom are either stillborn or die soon after birth, according to Children’s Hospital Colorado. But the ones with the greatest chance of survival, like 3-week-old Vanellope Hope Wilkins, typically have no other heart defects, which are common among babies with ectopia cordis.
“The actual defect in baby Vanellope’s chest wall was quite small,” Jonathan Cusack, a consultant neonatologist with Glenfield Hospital, said in a press release issued by the hospital. “The main concern with re-positioning her heart was that the arteries and veins which bring blood to and from the heart were extremely elongated, and might become kinked and blocked when the heart was placed inside the chest wall.
“To ensure this didn’t happen the plan was to use a special splint to support the edges of the larger hole that had been created in the front of her chest, attached to its own plastic tube. This meant it was possible to hang her heart outside of her chest to help create more space within, and allow a plastic sheet to be stitched around it to seal the heart away from the outside air.”
Vanellope has since undergone two additional surgeries, one to remove the supporting tube and another to place her heart behind the skin of her chest wall.
The Washington Post has more on the story below:
Daniel joined TriMed’s Chicago editorial team in 2017 as a Cardiovascular Business writer. He previously worked as a writer for daily newspapers in North Dakota and Indiana.