Specialists save baby with heart outside of body
● Parents speak of relief as daughter was able to breathe
A baby born with its heart outside of its chest has miraculously survived after three complex operations.
Vanellope Hope Wilkins was delivered prematurely by almost a month at a Leicester hospital with her heart and part of her stomach growing on the outside of her body.
Her parents were initially told at the first scan that termination was the only option.
It is the first known case in Britain where a baby has survived the rare condition.
A baby born with an extremely rare condition in which the heart grows on the outside of the body has survived, in what is believed to be a UK first.
Vanellope Hope Wilkins was due to be delivered on Christmas Eve – before a rare condition meant she had to be born prematurely by caesarean section on 22 November at Glenfield Hospital in Leicester.
The condition, called ectopia cordis, was discovered during a scan after nine weeks of the pregnancy. It showed the baby’s heart and part of her stomach were growing on the outside of her body.
Her parents, Naomi Findlay and Dean Wilkins, of Bulwell, Nottinghamshire, said the first scans led doctors to tell them that a termination was the only option.
And experts, including the consultant cardiologist, have said that they do not know of a case in the UK where a baby has survived such a condition.
Speaking of when she first found out about the condition, Ms Findlay, 31, said: “I burst into tears. When we did the research we just couldn’t physically look because the condition came with so many problems.
“All the way through it, it was, ‘The chances of survival are next to none, the only option is to terminate, we can offer counselling’ and things like that.
“In the end I just said that termination is not an option for me, if it was to happen naturally then so be it.”
Explaining what it felt like after the birth, she said: “I started to panic. I actually felt physically sick because I actually thought there was a big possibility I wouldn’t be able to see her or hear her or anything really.
“But when she came out and she came out crying that was it, the relief fell out of me.”
Describing her emotions almost three weeks after Vanellope was born, she said: “I just want to climb into her cot and take her place, just to let her breathe a little bit.”
Mr Wilkins, 43, a builder, said: “We still didn’t know what we were looking at when we saw the scan. We were told that our best bet was to terminate and my whole world just fell to bits.”
He said: “What they said is, when the baby is born she has got to be able to breathe … Twenty minutes went by and she was still shouting her head off – it made us so joyful.”
The couple said the baby was named after a character in the Disney film, Wreck It Ralph. Ms Findlay said: “Vanellope in the film is so stubborn and she turnsintoaprincessattheend.”
Frances Bu’lock, the consultant paediatric cardiologist at Glenfield Hospital, said she had described the chances of the baby surviving as “remote”. She said: “I had seen one 20 years ago but that pregnancy was ended.” She added that she had done some research, but there was little material available, and “the cases are all very different”.
COMMENT “We still didn’t know what we were looking at when we sawthescan…my whole world just fell to bits”
DEAN WILKINS
Sometimes one has to take a step back and simply admire the wonders that modern medical science can perform. Who could have imagined that a baby born with her heart outside her body could have possibly survived just a few decades ago?
But today Vanellope Hope Wilkins is alive because of the extraordinary skill of a team of surgeons who put her heart back inside her chest cavity, the first time such a procedure has been carried out in the UK.
Instead of grieving over her loss, her parents now have the joy of a new child.
This happy news comes after scientists reported the success of a potentially groundbreaking new drug designed to treat Huntington’s disease in trials involving a small group of patients.
While the trial was too small and did not last long enough to demonstrate that the drug is a cure, one expert described it as the “biggest breakthrough in neurodegenerative disease in the past 50 years”.
But, of course, there is a significant cost to complex surgery and research into new medicines, one that we in the UK have largely been insulated from by the National Health Service.
In places like the US, people are much more familiar with the tens of thousands of pounds that hospital treatment can cost – thanks to being presented with the receipt.
Being free at the point of delivery, as the NHS famously is, means there is a risk we start to take healthcare for granted. The health service could doubtless make savings, but if we are to take advantage of medical breakthroughs that can save lives and treat devastating diseases we will have to pay for them.
If our politicians are to accept the need to spend more on health, we the public will need to recognise this first.
Increasing taxes is never popular, but this may have to happen if the NHS is to keep up with our expectations of world-class treatment.
However, putting up taxes – as the Scottish Government appears to be about to do – is not a simple matter. Business leaders have warned doing so could depress growth, with a negative effect on overall revenue.
And the IPPR Scotland think tank today reports that public spending – outside of the protected health and police budgets – could be cut by £1.3bn a year by 2019.
So any extra money from higher taxes may be quickly swallowed up as most of our services remain much the same – a bleak prospect.