Doctors at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia pioneered a new surgical intervention that allowed a toddler to temporarily survive without a heart.<\/p>\n
The child’s heart was failing fast, and traditional treatments weren’t working. That’s when the desperate family turned to CHOP, where the team created a first-of-its-kind intervention.<\/p>\n
Michael Webb lived 9 months without a heart.<\/p>\n
Dr. Katsuhide Maeda said the dramatic intervention was the only way to save his life.<\/p>\n
“We take out his entire heart,” Maeda said.<\/p>\n
Michael Webb was born in Virginia with a very complex heart disease.<\/p>\n
“Very scary. I didn’t know what to expect,” said mom Ashley Webb.<\/p>\n
Everything had failed when the Webb family ended up at CHOP.<\/p>\n
“CHOP’s willing to do what they have to do to save lives, and that’s why we’re here,” said dad Rick Webb.<\/p>\n
Michael Webb needed a heart transplant to survive, but he could not be stabilized with traditional surgical options. So the CHOP team devised an innovative way to replace his failing heart with a combination of mechanical devices.<\/p>\n
“I knew that this was really high risk, and also, be honest, I was not sure this really works, but I believe that this works,” said Maeda. “So that is why we try.”<\/p>\n
“They explained the odds, and it was 50-50,” said Rick Webb. “We jumped on it because 50% chance was better than the zero we had.”<\/p>\n
“We were terrified but also hopeful that it would work and he would get to transplant,” said Ashley Webb.<\/p>\n
A donor heart was found in December.<\/p>\n
“It was a Christmas miracle,” said Ashley Webb.<\/p>\n
The heart transplant surgery was a success, worthy of a send-off party, as the family left the hospital.<\/p>\n
“I always tell them, I appreciate you saving my son’s life. It’s amazing,” said Ashley Webb.<\/p>\n
Now, the two-year-old comes back for checkups.<\/p>\n
“He’s doing good. He wants to get down and play,” said Ashley Webb.<\/p>\n
“It’s remarkable. I’m so glad that this worked,” said Maeda.<\/p>\n
It was a risky experiment that doctors said now offers new hope for others.<\/p>\n
Parents Ashley and Rick Webb said they are especially grateful to CHOP. Five other hospitals said they couldn’t help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Doctors at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia pioneered a new surgical intervention that allowed a toddler to temporarily…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[6981,12856,12855,69,71,70,12854],"class_list":["post-18137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-childrens-hospital-of-philadelphia","tag-heart-disease","tag-organ-donor","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-transplant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}