British doctors saved a baby girl who was born with her heart out

Little Vanillope Hope Wilkins was born with an extremely rare defect — ectopia of the heart. With this pathology, the human heart is located outside the body. Several dozen surgeons fought for her life, and to the joy of everyone, the girl survived!

Source: Gmail

The girl's parents found out about ectopia in the ninth week of pregnancy, but the mother refused to have an abortion, despite the persuasions of doctors.

According to the results of the tests, the baby had no chromosomal abnormalities. The specialists decided to direct all their efforts to save the child. Then a large team of obstetricians, neonatologists, cardiologists and other specialists was assembled.

According to statistics, more than 90% of newborns with ectopia of the heart are either born already dead, or die during the first days of life. This pathology is extremely rare — several cases per million. In practice, there is very little chance of surviving ectopia.

It was expected that the girl would be born on December 25, but doctors decided to play it safe and extracted her from her mother's womb by Caesarean section on November 22.

Already 50 minutes after birth, the baby was sent to the operating room. 50 doctors took part in the two-stage surgical intervention. As a result of two complicated operations performed on the first and seventh days of the child's life, the heart was safely moved to the chest.

The girl has no sternum, so surgeons made a small incision on her chest and stretched it with a plastic ring to create more space for the heart. The beating organ, covered with a temporary protective membrane, was placed over the hole. For the next nine days, Vanilope lay on her back in the intensive care unit, and her heart gradually, under the influence of gravity, independently sank into the hole in her chest.

By December 1, Vanillope's heart had completely moved into the chest. The plastic ring was removed and the hole in the chest was covered with a permanent breathable membrane patch to prevent the skin from growing to the heart. Then the ends of the child's ribs were pulled together by a special mesh to create a kind of cage protecting the heart instead of the sternum. At the end, surgeons made bilateral lateral incisions on the girl's skin, which made it possible to pull the skin over the incision area and sew it up.

Now the baby is on artificial ventilation, and doctors are confident that she will recover successfully. Happy parents are waiting for when they can finally reunite with their strong baby.