{"id":280326,"date":"2022-11-25T09:51:57","date_gmt":"2022-11-25T15:51:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=280326"},"modified":"2022-11-23T09:29:14","modified_gmt":"2022-11-23T15:29:14","slug":"baby-surgery-8-days-fatal-heart-condition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/baby-surgery-8-days-fatal-heart-condition\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby has complex surgery 8 days after birth for ‘almost uniformly fatal’ heart condition"},"content":{"rendered":"
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During an ultrasound when she was four months pregnant, Jasmine Matthews learned<\/a> that her preborn baby had a heart condition that was later diagnosed as being fatal without surgery. But thanks to a team of doctors at Dell Children’s Medical Center who were willing to perform the surgery on the baby girl just eight days after her birth, little Le’Lani Bryant is doing well.<\/p>\n

Le’Lani was diagnosed with transposition of the great arteries \u2014 in other words,\u00a0her arteries were reversed and pumped blood backward, causing her to not get enough oxygenated blood. Dr. Charles Fraser Jr., head of the Texas Center for Pediatric and Congenital Heart Disease, a joint program of Austin’s Dell Children’s Medical Center and UT Health Austin, said that without surgery the condition is “almost uniformly fatal.” Thankfully, prenatal testing helped to diagnose her and get her the help she needed at birth.<\/p>\n

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But then, Matthews developed preeclampsia, a condition that causes dangerously high blood pressure and can lead to death in both mother and child. She had the condition with her first three pregnancies and her first baby did not survive. “I couldn’t breathe; I couldn’t sleep; I was having a hard time walking,” she told Austin American-Standard.<\/p>\n

Mathews was taken to the hospital and Le’Lani was delivered at 27 weeks weighing just one pound and three ounces.<\/p>\n

“She looked like a tiny little me,” said Le’Lani’s father Tometheus Bryant. “She looked just like the sonogram pictures.”<\/p>\n