Apr 23, 2008 8:00 am US/Eastern
N.J. Baby Survives Treatments For Heart Defects
NEWARK (CBS) ―
Sadira Matas was born with two major heart defects: a hole in the wall between her ventricles, the main pumping chambers, and a narrowing of her aorta, the main artery coming out of her heart. But after treatment, she is doing fine.
Virginia Matas, got Sadira to the hospital just in time. "She had no other option. You know they said, you know, she may not even have had a few hours left in her."
"All of the sudden there was a day where she just wouldn't eat anything. She was sleeping nonstop, she was breathing fast, and you know her feet were blue," Virginia said.
Sadira looks and sounds pretty much like a normal 6-week-old baby. The only sign she had a problem is a big scar on her chest.
Closing the hole in Sadira's heart would normally require surgery. Instead, Dr. Rajiv Verma used a newly-approved minimally invasive technique called an amplatzer device.
First Dr. Verma threaded a thin catheter through the hole. Then a tiny metal mesh dumbell was released, essentially pinching off the hole.
"The recovery time is much faster. The pain factor is no longer there. And the return to normal state or functional state is much more fast," Dr. Verma said.
But there was still the narrowed aorta to deal with. That's where surgeon Dr. Joanna Starr from the Children's Hospital of New Jersey got involved.
"We took out the narrow part of the artery, actually cut it out and then brought the lower part of the aorta, from the lower part of the body, up to the upper, normal part of the upper aorta or the ascending aorta and we put it together thus making her a new blood vessel," Dr. Starr reports.
That did require surgery, but by combining the two procedures, Sadira's time on the heart-lung machine was minimized and it avoided having to cut the heart muscle itself.
"If you make an incision in the left venticle, it doesn't like it very much, because it doesn't heal as well. And very often those children end up very, very ill," Dr. Starr said.
After just a few days, Sadira was able to go home.
And today, "Everything looks good, she's feeling well. Yes she's gaining weight. She is eating," Virginia said.
When asked if Sadira's crying like a normal baby, Virgina said: "Yes, definitely doing that."
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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