British officials say a baby born with an extremely rare condition has survived three surgeries to place her heart inside her chest. Glenfield Hospital in Leicester said on Wednesday that baby Vanellope Hope was born in late November with her heart growing on the outside of her body. The unusual condition is called ectopia cordis. Dr. Nick Moore said the baby is in the hospital’s pediatric intensive care unit. He says “she has a long way to go but so far at least she now has a chance at a future.” Most babies born with this condition do not survive although there have been some cases in which surgery has been successful. Infection poses a severe risk to babies with this condition.
Vanellope, who was delivered three weeks ago in Leicester, was born with the extremely rare condition ectopia cordis, the BBC reports. Ectopia cordis is a congenital malformation in which the heart is abnormally located either partially or totally outside of the thorax. Vanellope’s parents, Naomi Findlay, 31, and Dean Wilkins, 43, from Nottingham, told the BBC that they were advised to terminate the pregnancy when ultrasounds showed the baby had no breastplate and her heart was outside her chest. “The chances of survival were next to none — no-one believed she was going to make it except us,” Wilkins said.
Vanellope is believed to be the first baby with the condition in the U.K. to survive, according to staff at the Glenfield Hospital where she is being treated, time.com reported. Babies born with ectopia cordis have just a 10% chance of survival. In the U.S., in recent years, there have been a few cases where babies have survived following surgery, including Audrina Cardenas who was born in Texas in 2012, and Kieran Veitz who was born in 2015, time.com added.
