Doctor performs surgery on baby whose heart is the size of a grape

[Sharpieman]

NRI doc shows his scalpel skills




WASHINGTON: An Indian-American cardiac surgeon who successfully performed open heart surgery on a one-week old baby with a heart the size of a grape is the toast of both the medical community and the infant's mother, who is herself a paediatrician.


Dr V Mohan Reddy, whose fame as a paediatric cardiac surgeon preceded this success, took on the difficult case after doctors in Southern California gave week-old Jerrick De Leon zero chance of surviving a condition known as "transposition of the great arteries," which disrupts oxygenated blood supply because of crossed blood vessels.

The condition can be corrected by an arterial switch procedure, but what made Jerrick's case dicey was that he was born more than 13 weeks early and weighed only 700 grams, or slightly more than 1.5 pounds, at the time of his surgery.

Even his mother Maria Lourdes was in despair considering Leon's survival at birth itself was a miracle. His premature birth at 26.5 weeks gestation was necessitated by her severe pre-eclampsia, a dangerous spike in a pregnant woman's blood pressure that can be fatal to both mother and baby.

But the SoCal doctors referred Leon's case to the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford, where
Dr Reddy had successfully performed a different cardiac repair on a newborn Serena Brown, who weighed only 640 grams at the time of her surgery in 2001. At the time she was believed to be the smallest child
ever to undergo open-heart surgery.
Link:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/a...ow/1025337.cms

Crazy, 20 years ago they weren't able to do this surgery.

[Eaglesfan27]

Absolutely amazing. I've observed and assisted (in a very BASIC way, holding lots of retractors and such) in this surgery on a full term infant during a pediatric surgery rotation in my 4th year of med school and that was even difficult. I'm just amazed at this doctor's skill in successfully performing this surgery on such fragile premature babies.

[miked]

I've done microsurgery for research and let me tell you the pressure I felt, I couldn't imagine doing it on a baby...simply amazing.

[Sharpieman]

I had this same heart problem and same surgery (arterial switch) when I was 16- it took 14 hours and was performed by one of Reddy's peers Bruce Wrights (sp?) at Stanford. Its really hard to fathom how he did this difficult of a surgery on someone that small.