Sunday, Feb 20, 2005
Sunday, Feb 20, 2005 |
| International | ||||
|
News:
Front Page |
National |
Tamil Nadu |
Andhra Pradesh |
Karnataka |
Kerala |
New Delhi |
Other States |
International |
Business |
Sport |
Miscellaneous |
Engagements |
Advts: Classifieds | Employment | International
By Eric Leach
Dr. V. Mohan Reddy observing Jerrick De Leon, the smallest infant to survive an open-heart surgery, at the Lucile Salter Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford University in California, on Friday. — AP
VAN NUYS (CALIFORNIA), FEB. 19. The three-week-old son of a Van Nuys pediatrician — just 24 ounces when he was born prematurely — was recovering on Friday after becoming the world's smallest infant to survive a delicate type of open-heart surgery. Jerrick De Leon, the son of Dr. Maria Lourdes De Leon, was born 13 weeks premature, with his aorta and pulmonary arteries connected to the wrong ventricles in his heart. Surgeons switched the arteries during a "miraculous" operation on February 6 — working on a heart that was about the size of a grape and arteries little larger than the tip of a ballpoint pen. "I am a mother and I am always looking for the hopeful side of things," said Dr. De Leon, whose son was delivered by emergency caesarean section in a Kaiser hospital in Los Angeles after she suffered a spike in her blood pressure. "Jerrick is doing far better than expected, especially since he was originally given no chance of survival. "This miraculous surgery has corrected his heart problem ... I don't know how to express how thankful I am." Jerrick has been transferred from the Stanford hospital's cardiac care unit to the neonatal intensive care unit, where he can recuperate and gain weight with other preemies, officials said. As of Friday, he is 13 inches long and weighs 25 ounces. Barring complications from his prematurity, Jerrick is expected to have a normal lifespan. Because Jerrick was so small, doctors initially thought his heart defect was inoperable. But they did more research and determined Dr. V. Mohan Reddy, at the Stanford University hospital, had successfully treated extremely tiny infants. While an arterial switch is not uncommon procedure on newborns, it is usually performed babies in the 2-pound range, Dr. Reddy said. "Babies this premature are very small and very fragile, with extremely delicate tissue," Dr. Reddy said. "It's necessary to scale down your hand and arm movements to achieve a very fine degree of accuracy." Although De Leon is a pediatrician who had cared for small infants during her medical training, she said she had trouble coming to grips with the seriousness of his condition.
"When the pediatrician was telling me about Jerrick's heart defect, it just wrecked me emotionally — I couldn't feel anything," she said. "Now, as a mom, I feel that my baby is going to be OK."
Printer friendly
page
News:
Front Page |
National |
Tamil Nadu |
Andhra Pradesh |
Karnataka |
Kerala |
New Delhi |
Other States |
International |
Business |
Sport |
Miscellaneous |
Engagements |
|
|
|
The Hindu Group: Home | About Us | Copyright | Archives | Contacts | Subscription Group Sites: The Hindu | Business Line | The Sportstar | Frontline | The Hindu eBooks | The Hindu Images | Home |
Copyright © 2005, The
Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of
this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of
The Hindu
|
