Innovative open-heart surgery gets gymnast back on the mat in two weeks
Kaelyn Wold is used to daily practice and long hours on the mat. The 16-year-old started as a gymnast when she was a toddler, working her way up to the Roseville Gymnastics Club.
Given her active lifestyle, she was surprised to learn this spring that she had a hole between the two upper chambers of her heart, also known as an atrial septal defect (ASD). Kaelyn had been living with the congenital heart defect since birth. This summer, she took a break from gymnastics to undergo surgery.
Thanks to an innovative, minimally invasive procedure at M Health Fairview Masonic Children’s Hospital, she didn’t have to be away from the gym long.
A different kind of open-heart surgery
While many congenital heart defects are discovered early in life, it’s not uncommon for teens and even adults to be diagnosed for the first time.
“Patients can live for many years without showing symptoms,” said M Health Fairview Congenital Heart Surgeon Sameh Said, MBBCh, MD, FACS. “Especially with someone like Kaelyn, who is exercising constantly, it may be more difficult to identify symptoms like fatigue.”
Kaelyn was at the clinic to discuss lower back pain when an x-ray revealed her heart was enlarged. Doctors discovered she had a rare type of atrial septal defect (ASD) – a hole between the upper chambers of her heart – known as a sinus venosus ASD. Kaelyn also had an associated anomalous pulmonary venous connection. This means that one or more of the veins that carry blood from her lungs to her heart didn’t connect correctly.
Traditionally, surgeons would need to go in through the patient’s sternum and chest muscles, breaking the bone during the open-heart procedure to access and fix the defect. But the experienced care team at the Heart Center at M Health Fairview Masonic Children’s Hospital was able to offer Kaelyn a different option.
Instead, Said and his team made a small incision under her right armpit. Known as a vertical right lateral thoracotomy, this approach didn’t require any broken bones or cut muscle. Internally, the procedure to repair Kaelyn’s heart defects was exactly the same. It was just done through a much smaller incision in a location that would leave little to no visible scarring.
