Rare Congenital Cardiovascular Malformation Surgery Performed on Premature Infant

At the Edmond and Lily Safra Children's Hospital at Sheba Medical Center, medical history is made when complex cardiac surgery is performed for the first time on a tiny, prematurely delivered infant, with a rare heart defect.

This is the first time in medical history that this complex surgical procedure has been performed on a prematurely delivered infant who weighed a mere 1.6 Kilograms at surgery.

The infant was born with a rare congenital cardiovascular malformation, transposition of great vessels, which is inversion of the main heart blood vessels (the aorta arises entirely from the right ventricle and the pulmonary artery from the left ventricle), and a hole in the heart partition. This is a very rare heart defect which even infants born at full term cannot survive without surgical intervention.

This tiny patient was referred to the Sheba Medical Center by Dr. Lorber from the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa. At the Edmond and Lily Safra Children's Hospital at Sheba, the infant was examined by Dr. J. Hegesh, and the complex surgery was performed by Dr. D. Mishali.

A case such as this, involving this rare heart defect occurring in a prematurely delivered infant has not yet been documented in medical literature. 

The infant's parents are available for interview.