HOW HEART PROCEDURE IS CHANGING YOUNG LIVES
Dell Children’s method eliminates need for open-heart surgery.
Alyson Hunter knows the pain of having open-heart surgery. She had three heart surgeries by the time she was 7. The first, at birth, was to put in a shunt that would allow her heart to work well enough for her to go home. The next was when she was 11 months old and the last at age 7, to put in a new pulmonary valve.
Alyson, 13, was born at 32 weeks gestation with VATER syndrome; the acronym stands for all the abnormalities that come with the syndrome. Alyson had an esophagus that wasn’t attached, only one kidney, a tethered spinal cord and the heart condition Tetralogy of Fallot, which made news after Jimmy Kimmel’s son was born with it in April. Tetralogy of Fallot happens when the muscle that houses the pulmonary valve doesn’t grow properly.
The fix requires first closing the hole where the muscle should have been and then replacing the pulmonary valve. Until now, doctors in Austin had to perform open-heart surgery and use a donated human tissue valve.
Now, doctors at Dell Children’s Medical Center of Central Texas can insert an artificial Melody Transcatheter Pulmonary Valve, which is made of cow jugular vein sewn onto a small metal stent. They insert a catheter containing the valve into the leg and position it into the existing pulmonary valve. Then they inflate a balloon to place the Melody valve in the proper position and remove the catheter.
All of it can be done in a catheter lab in about three to four
hours, rather than in an operating room. For patients, this means that they go home the next day, rather than staying in the hospital for a week. It’s also a lot less painful.
Alyson — one of the first three patients at Dell Children’s to have the Melody valve inserted — had surgery March 2, a Thursday, and went home the next day. That weekend, she was able to jump on a trampoline and play basketball. She went back to school that Monday. No one believed she had just had heart surgery, her mom, Cammie Olah, said.
Before her valve was replaced both times, Alyson had been very tired. She would come home from school and sleep. It was a struggle to do all the things the Giddings Middle School seventh-grader was used to doing, such as dance and cheerleading.
This time, unlike when she was 7, she went into the recovery room without any tubes or wires coming out of her. “It’s really hard to see your child like that,” Olah said of how Alyson looked after her open-heart surgeries. The healed incision that runs from her neck to her belly button did not have to be reopened. She also wasn’t in a lot of pain. She just had a little tenderness in her leg where the catheter was inserted.
Olah was told when Alyson was 7 that her next valve might be like the Melody but couldn’t believe it would be this different from the prior valve replacement.
“It’s a really big blessing,” Olah said. “I felt so blessed. I walked around on cloud nine for a week afterwards.”
Dr. Byron Holt, chief of cardiology at Dell Children’s, performed Alyson’s procedure. “We’re very pleased with the results,” Holt said. All three patients who have had the procedure so far at Dell are doing well.
“It’s pretty impressive stuff,” he said. “It changes what we do, what our options are.”
It also avoids the expense of a long hospital stay and lessens the complications from open-heart surgery. There still are risks, of course, such as rupturing the existing valve or severe bleeding or the valve not going into the right place, but Dell Children’s keeps a surgical team on call in case that happens, Holt said.
The valve is expected to last seven to 10 years. When it wears out, doctors will be able to place another Melody, or whatever new technology is out there, right inside the existing Melody, just as they placed the current Melody inside the existing valve.
For Alyson, her experience with heart surgeries has defined what she wants to do with her life. She’d like to be a cardiac nurse.
“I’d like to share my experience with other kids,” she said.