Belize Heart Patient to Receive Emergency Gift of Life� Surgery
11/09/2005
St. Joseph�s Children�s Hospital will donate services to repair a tear in the 10-year-old boy�s heart.
A week ago, Nevil Bermudez was like any other healthy 10-year-old boy, laughing and playing with his friends, and presumed by his family to be perfectly healthy. Today he is in the Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at St. Joseph�s Children�s Hospital, awaiting emergency heart surgery after collapsing in his hometown of Belize from a tear in his mitral valve.
In a normal heart, the mitral valve only allows blood to flow from the upper-left chamber (atrium) to the heart�s lower-left chamber (ventricle). But if it becomes diseased or torn so it cannot close properly, blood can leak backward (regurgitate) into the upper chamber (left atrium). This uncirculated blood causes the heart to work harder to pump the extra regurgitated blood (volume overload). It is not clear yet what caused Nevil�s condition, but acute mitral regurgitation is often the result of dysfunction or injury to the valve following a heart attack or valve infection.
According to Nurse Practitioner Heidi Hess, who, along with her husband began the Gift of Life� program at St. Joseph�s Children�s Hospital in 1996, mild cases of mitral valve regurgitation cause few problems, but more severe cases, like Nevil�s, eventually weaken the heart and lead to fatal heart failure.
Fortunately, doctors and nurses at St. Joseph�s Children�s Hospital, are making sure that Nevil�s heart is repaired before that happens.
St. Joseph�s Children�s Hospital Pediatric Heart Surgeon Paul Chai will perform life-saving heart surgery on Nevil as part of the Gift of Life� program Wednesday, Oct. 12. Gift of Life� is a worldwide Rotary International Service Program begun to help needy children in foreign countries obtain open-heart surgery in the United States. St. Joseph�s Children�s Hospital became the first Florida hospital to participate in the Gift of Life� program in 1996. Now, more than 90 children from countries such as Kosovo, Bosnia, Cuba and Uganda have come to St. Joseph�s Children�s Hospital for life-saving surgery.
According to Hess, the patients aren�t the only people who benefit from the Gift of Life� surgeries. These children are ambassadors for our country. The life and joy that they take back to their families and friends at home convey a message stronger than words.�
Members of the team performing Jabur�s surgery will donate their services, and the Rotarians will give the hospital $5,000 to help fund the surgery - a fraction of what the procedure typically costs.
Para solicitudes de prensa, contacte con Amy Gall al (813) 870-4731.
