People don't usually associate teenagers with heart problems, but congenital heart defects are more common than you might think.
A recent Healthier, Happy Lives Blog post tells the story of Ray Santa Cruz, a high-school senior from Salinas, Calif. who began to suffer from a mysterious and severe chest pain when he exerted himself. It had gotten so bad he had trouble breathing and sleeping.
It turns out that Cruz had an anomalous aortic origin of a coronary artery, meaning that his arteries didn't attach in the right places. Until very recently, most people with this condition went undiagnosed until a post-heart-attack autopsy. Even with a more timely diagnosis, many surgeons would try to operate in the same way they would on a 70-year old, which is "absolutely the wrong thing to do," according to Frank Hanley, MD, the surgeon who ultimately fixed Cruz's heart. A standard bypass operation is “what you do for Grandpa" but not young patients like Cruz.
Stanford physicians developed surgical techniques to fix the defect fifteen years ago, and since then, Lucile Packard Children's Hospital has treated about 90 young patients, more than any other institution. Cruz had a very specific variation of the condition, for which neither of the standard procedures would have worked; Hanley tried something entirely new, and so far the complex procedure has been a success.
Check out the story to read more.
Previously: Baby with rare heart defect saved by innovative surgery, A nurse puts heart into her work at Adult Congenital Heart Program, Patient is "living to live instead of living to survive," thanks to heart repair surgery and Should high school and college athletes be routinely screened for heart conditions?
Photo by Nicolas Raymond
