4-day-old boy with 40 heart beats a minute gets pacemaker

BENGALURU: A four-day-old boy born with a cardiac anomaly has been treated with a pacemaker implant at a city hospital. While the baby had no significant structural problems in the heart, his heart beat was 35-40 a minute instead of the normal 140 among newborns.
Doctors said this was the tiniest heart treated for the procedure in Karnataka so far. The baby was delivered on January 28 at a private nursing home in Bengaluru and the next day the child was shifted to Manipal Hospitals. Since the infant weighed only 1.6kg on Day 1, a small pacemaker wasn’t available. The delivery was done preterm, in the eighth month of pregnancy, as they were issues with the placental blood circulation.

Pacemaker from Hong Kong

An order was placed for the smallest pacemaker available in Hong Kong and received on Day 4 — January 31 — and the procedure was immediately performed. The pacemaker weighs just 12.8g to monitor and regulate the rhythm of the strawberry-sized heart. The pacemaker’s batteries will run for five years, then the boy has to undergo another procedure.

“The pacemaker implant by itself is not new, but what made this case special was the size of the child, who weighed 1.6kg at the time of birth. As the required pacemaker was not available, it was specially procured from Hong Kong,” said Dr Devanand Shivanna, cardiothoracic surgeon, Manipal Hospitals, who operated on the baby.

Rekindling hope

The baby’s parents from Shivamogga had earlier lost their first child to stillbirth, while during her second pregnancy, the mother had suffered spontaneous abortion. The boy was their third child.

The family was aware of the heart problem before his birth as an anomaly was found during scanning and continued with the pregnancy. Doctors at Manipal Hospitals assured the family not to terminate the baby as it was a curable condition. The mother then shifted to Bengaluru for delivery to prevent the risk of ferrying the newborn after birth.

“There is a need to raise awareness on what are the correctable defects detected during the fetal echo. Not every baby with defect needs to be medically terminated as there are treatments available,” said Dr Devanand.

Prior to this, the youngest patient operated in Karantaka was a 15-day-old baby with a similar defect four years ago, said Dr CN Manjunath, director, Sri Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences and Research.