During his opening monologue last week, an emotional Jimmy Kimmel, of ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” told viewers about his newborn son, who was born with a congenital heart defect.
Hours after birth, Kimmel’s son Billy was diagnosed with a defect known as Tetralogy of Fallot with pulmonary atresia. He received emergency surgery and is fortunately doing well.
After sharing the news during his late-night talk show, Kimmel’s story went viral. Unfortunately, his experience is not terribly uncommon. About 1 in 100 babies are born with heart defects, making congenital heart disease the most common of all birth defects.
The good news is that treatments for those defects are improving all the time. At the Inova Children’s Heart Program and across the country, we’re doing amazing things to help babies like Billy survive and thrive.
Congenital Heart Disease: Better Treatments
While heart defects aren’t rare, each one is unique. Tetralogy of Fallot, for instance, makes up only about 2% to 5% of those defects. Even among those babies, we see a lot of variation from case to case. Some infants with the condition will require surgery within the first few months of life. Others, like Kimmel’s son, need immediate surgery to survive.
Overall, about a quarter of children born with heart defects will require immediate surgery. Many more will face operations in the years to come.
While no parent wants to hear that their child needs heart surgery, the odds of success are high. Today more than 90% of babies born with congenital heart disease are expected to live to adulthood.
That level of success is due to advances at every level of care:
Lifelong Care
While most of our young patients go on to live healthy lives, they can be at risk for future heart problems as they grow and develop. To connect these patients to expert care, we launched Inova’s Adult Congenital Heart Clinic in 1994.
At the time, it was one of the first such programs in the country. Now many other heart centers are developing similar programs to treat adults who were born with heart defects.
There’s a happy reason such services are in high demand: Thanks to improvements in surgery and care, adult survivors of congenital heart disease now outnumber children born with heart defects in the U.S.
Read about Eliza’s pediatric heart surgery
To support the Inova Children’s Heart Program, register to attend the 11th Annual StarKid 5K and Family Fun Run, Sunday, June 4, 2017, at the Fairfax Corner Shopping Center.
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Many Thanks to all of the wonderful Doctors and Nurses who helped to start this Program in 1994, when little attention was given to this population who now with the wonderful expertise of Inova Physcians are living to see a Healthy Adult Life.