One in 200. A chance that a mother would deliver a baby with heart disease.
And some of these heart defects are serious enough to warrant early intervention. A piece of good news is that some holes in the heart, stenosed valves and abnormal connections between the great arteries can be repaired without open heart surgery.
For such cardiac defects to be successfully repaired, we require skilled cardiologists, well-equipped Cath labs and support services. And money.
Last month, the MGIMS Cath Lab was abuzz with paediatric cardiology interventions. Babies with congenital heart disease would arrive in the Cath lab, have their defects fixed, enjoy a day or two in the paediatric ICU and go home, their chests heaving with unbridled joy.
We asked Dr. Abhay Bhoyar, paediatric interventional cardiologist, to look after such babies. He would bring his skills and wisdom that he had painstakingly acquired in the UK, to close ventricular and atrial septal defects, open aortic and pulmonary valves, repair a coarctation and close a patent ductus arteriosus. Carefully balancing courage over caution, he meticulously planned each procedure and inspired his colleagues within and outside his specialty to pull off what he was aiming at. Over a 2-month period, a dozen such babies got their heart defects repaired in our Cath Lab.
None of the babies had parents rich enough to afford a Cath lab procedure. Most came from very poor families. Their parents brought them to MGIMS, with tears in their eyes, and hope in their heart. But when they left the hospital, their eyes continued to be tearyโtears of joy and happiness seeping down their cheeks. They had no reason to restrain these tears, for their wet eyes symbolised relief from months of uncertainty and suppressed fear.
As an example, last week, a 4-month-old baby had her patent ductus arteriosus fixed in the MGIMS Cath lab. This baby, deserted by her alcoholic father soon after she was born, had a serious cardiac defect. Her mother and grandfather took her to the hospital in the village, a district hospital, a medical college, and a for-profit hospital only to be told that she required an urgent and expensive intervention to fix her defect. As serendipity would have it, her grandfather chanced to see Dr. Bhoyar, who asked her to get admitted to the MGIMS hospital. The baby arrived in the Cath Lab, survived a cardiac arrest, got a cardiac device in her great vessels, spent two days in a paediatric ICU and went home, all pink.
Some heart stories do have a well-deserved fairy-tale ending!
