Rare operation gives boy chance for a healthy life

AFTER a six hour operation yesterday, doctors from the Shanghai Yodak Cardio Hospital successfully put the heart of a nine-year-old boy back into his chest cavity, repairing a rare congenital heart defect.

Thanks to a national charity program sponsoring poor children with congenital heart diseases, Xie Chuanfeng, who was born with a complicated heart disease as well as a cleft lip and deformed urethra, was operated on so that his heart no longer appears like a bulge under the skin.

The operation was a success and the boy is expected to leave hospital in a week if his condition remains stable, doctors said.

According to experts, Xie suffered from a disease called the pentalogy of Cantrell, which involves deformities including a lack of a piece of chest bone and a defect in the abdominal wall.

In the operation doctors repaired the damaged breastbone and placed the heart inside the chest cavity while correcting the congenital heart disease at the same time.

The abnormality occurs in less than six in every one million births, with fewer than 200 cases reported worldwide so far. Xie's was the six documented case to undergo surgery in China.

From a poor farming family in Anhui Province, Xie's parents were unable to treat his heart disease, which results in lowered immunity and left him sick every month with colds or pneumonia.

After a project sponsoring needy children with congenital heart diseases was launched in the city last November, Xie's parents made contact.

"The family was only asked to pay 10,000 yuan (US$1,377) while the rest of the 70,000 yuan medical expenses were shouldered by the project," said Zhang Xinli, president of Shanghai Yodak Cardio Hospital, which launched the China Heart Hope project with the Children's Hope Welfare Foundation.