Dakota’s story: Advances in medical management of pediatric heart failure

The Longe family (Left to right: Brooke, Roger, Erica, and Dakota) Over the past few decades, more and more children with congenital heart defects have been receiving life-saving surgery soon after birth. As surgical techniques improve, some children who would have died within the first few weeks of life are able to survive — but many still have residual heart failure. Transplant is often the optimal therapy for such patients, but the number of hearts available to transplant has not changed much over the last several years. “The number of patients listed for transplant is much greater than the number of donor hearts,” says Dr. Elizabeth Blume, director of the Heart Center’s Heart Failure program. “Due to this limitation, we’ve dedicated an entire service to optimizing care for children living with heart failure.” In recent years, the Heart Failure team has made significant strides in slowing the progress of heart failure in children. In some cases, disease progression has been slowed enough for the patient to be taken off of the heart transplant list for being “too well.” Each Monday for the next four weeks, Thriving is highlighting a very special Heart Center patient who was once listed for transplant, but was removed from the list thanks to successful medical management of her heart disease. Dakota’s story Dakota Longe was just three weeks old when she had her first “episode.” “She looked really pale, and the area around her mouth turned purple,...
Source: Thrive, Children's Hospital Boston - Category: Pediatrics Authors: Tags: Heart conditions Our patients’ stories Dr. Christina Vanderpluym Dr. Elizabeth Blume Dr. Tajinder Singh Dr. Wayne Tworetsky Heart Center heart failure heart transplant Source Type: news