{"id":299970,"date":"2023-10-12T10:38:21","date_gmt":"2023-10-12T15:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=299970"},"modified":"2023-10-25T12:16:53","modified_gmt":"2023-10-25T17:16:53","slug":"rare-heart-condition-nicu-college","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/rare-heart-condition-nicu-college\/","title":{"rendered":"Both born with a rare heart condition, they’ve grown from NICU neighbors to college roommates"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Tate Lewis and Seth Rippentrop were born just weeks apart in 2002. Both had been diagnosed<\/a> in the womb with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a condition in which the left side of the heart has not formed correctly. Now, they are juniors together at the University of Texas at Dallas.<\/p>\n

Both Lewis and Rippentrop were each given a 40% chance of survival as the condition can be fatal if left untreated, according to Dr. Steve Leonard, a pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon who treated Lewis at Children’s Health.<\/p>\n

“It’s a defect that is uniformly fatal if it’s not taken care of within the first few days of life,” Leonard told Good Morning America<\/a>.<\/p>\n