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A nearly month-old boy born with his heart lying outside his chest underwent successful surgery in Miami on Wednesday, with doctors easing the organ inside his body, the Associated Press reported.
Naseem Hasni was born Oct. 31 with a condition called ectopia cordis, where the heart develops on the outside of the chest. The heart has been beating normally and its aorta grew under the skin to deliver blood to the body.
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In the six-hour operation, surgeons at Holtz Children's Hospital wrapped the boy's heart in Gore-Tex fabric, then added layer of his own skin to replicate the missing pericardium, the sac that normally develops around the heart. They then eased the heart within the boy's chest.
Naseem remained in critical but stable condition Wednesday, doctors said. "He's not going to be able to play certain kinds of sports where a blow to the sternum to you and me wouldn't be a problem, but in him it would be. So I think some competitive sports are going to be out," cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Eliot Rosenkranz told the AP. "But he's going to be able to participate in other sorts of activities."
Ectopia cordis occurs in up to 7.9 per 1 million live births and has a post-surgery survival rate of 50 percent, the boy's doctors said.
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