The adoptive father and daughter both suffered from congenital heart disease, and both recovered their vitality after the operation

Correspondent Wen Honglei Huang Jieying

An adoptive father and daughter have been diagnosed with congenital heart disease, but the adoptive parents who are poor in the family have not abandoned their beloved daughter and have been raising funds for the operation. In the free clinic screening of the Hubei Provincial Birth Defect Prevention and Control Center, the medical team of the Hubei Provincial Maternal and Child Health Hospital learned of the family's experience and applied for free surgery funds for the father and daughter, and on the same day, Liantai cardiac intervention surgery revived the family. On February 9, the father and daughter came to Wuhan for postoperative review, and the situation was stable.

The adoptive father and daughter actually suffered from the same congenital heart disease

Mr. Du, 45, whose family lives in the rural areas of Tongcheng, has been infertile since he married his wife for many years, and has also gone to Wuhan and Changsha to do IVF, spending all his family savings but failing. In 2017, Mr. Du and his wife adopted a baby girl locally, and before going through the adoption procedures, the staff informed the couple that the child had congenital heart disease - patent ductus arteriosus and might have surgery later. "It's okay, we'll take her to surgery later." Without a moment's hesitation, the couple took the baby girl back and named her Heart, treating her as if she were their own.

In order to save the cost of surgery for the heart, Mr. Du went to Dongguan to work to earn money, and the heart was gradually raised under the care of his mother, but the congenital heart disease led to the child's growth restrictions, always shorter and thinner than the children of the same age, the couple looked in the eyes, anxious in the heart, always looking forward to saving enough money to operate on the child as soon as possible.

Last year, because of the increasing severity of coronary heart disease, Mr. Du found that he still had a heart atrial septum defect when he sought medical treatment in Dongguan, but due to limited funds, he only underwent coronary heart disease surgery. Not long after the operation, Mr. Du's mother also died after being hospitalized for severe coronary heart disease many times, which made this poor family worse.

The "Green Channel" helps father and daughter complete the operation

On January 4, the expert team of Hubei Provincial Birth Defect Prevention and Control Center went to Tongcheng free clinic. Mr. Du happened to be resting at home and immediately rushed to review it with his heart. Li Heng, director of the Department of Pediatric Cardiology of Hubei Provincial Maternal and Child Health Hospital, found that the murmur was obvious in the auscultation of the heart, and the heart ultrasound showed that the ductus arteriosus was closed and the left heart was enlarged, and it was necessary to do cardiac intervention surgery as soon as possible. After learning of the family's special situation, he immediately helped contact the staff of the Beijing Lianyi Foundation Children's Heart Project, and considering the family's financial difficulties, he especially applied for surgical expenses, travel expenses and living expenses subsidies during hospitalization for both father and daughter.

On January 11, Mr. Du, his wife and daughter came to Hubei Provincial Maternal and Child Health Hospital to live in the Department of Pediatric Cardiology and Surgery respectively. The medical staff in both departments knew about this special family and cared for the father and daughter. After a complete preoperative examination, the father and daughter arranged for the same day's continuous cardiac interventional occlusion surgery.

At 8:30 a.m. on January 13, the heart first entered the operating room to perform the vascular catheter interventional occlusion, the little girl was well-behaved and sensible, did not cry or make trouble, that is, she was particularly squeamish when she saw her father. Director Li Heng and the department team cooperated closely with the Department of Anesthesiology and the Department of Interventional Radiology to successfully perform patent ductus arteriosus occlusion for the heart, and the whole operation process was only 50 minutes. After the operation, Xinxin returned to the ward accompanied by medical staff. Looking at the child who returned safely and smoothly, Mr. Du was full of emotion, silently shed tears, and the stone that had been pressed in his heart for many years finally fell to the ground.

Subsequently, Mr. Du walked into the operating room with a relaxed mood. Director Li Heng led the team to start local anesthesia, puncture the femoral vein, establish a conveyor track, send it into the blocker, and finally open the "sealing umbrella" to firmly block the defect in the heart. Everyone cooperated with tacit understanding, skillful and precise movements, and successfully blocked the blood diversion caused by the lack of room.

After the operation, the heart woke up and kept thinking about dad, and the careful medical team had already applied for a single ward for the family, so that the father and daughter could accompany each other on the first night after the operation, and the family's concern for each other was closely linked. One day after the operation, the father and daughter were successfully discharged from the hospital and returned home.

"Under normal circumstances, after the birth of the child, the pulmonary circulation and systemic circulation perform their respective duties, and the ductus arteriosus closes on its own. However, the ductus arteriosus of the child with the heart and heart fails to close on its own, so that its blood is shunted from left to right, which can easily cause lung infection and ventricular hypertrophy of the child. Li Heng introduced that the traditional open chest surgery is traumatic, and interventional occlusion is a minimally invasive operation, which is to use an umbrella blocker to plug the leak of the heart, so as to avoid arteriovenous shunting and achieve the purpose of healing.

On February 9, the father and daughter returned to the hospital for review, and the position of the blockers of both of them was very stable, "Our family had a most down-to-earth Spring Festival!" Mr. Du said happily.

"In order to help more poor children complete surgery, the hospital has been making various efforts." Huang Ziming, director of the medical department of Hubei Provincial Maternal and Child Health Hospital, said. As the Birth Defect Prevention and Control Center of Hubei Province, the provincial management agency and designated medical institutions of the province's congenital structural deformity relief project, combined with the "Children's Heart Project Hospital Model" treatment project, it has helped nearly 400 needy families so far, with a total funding amount of more than 7 million yuan.