Well to start, what is a blue baby?
In talking with folks, the answers to this question were wide in range. Circulation was not so good for these babies. At birth, babies are a kind of blue color until they start to cry. The blue babies did not survive too long. For some, these words, blue baby, had little to no meaning. People sometimes lose babies, unexpectedly, from things such as sudden infant death. Having never seen a blue baby, and not knowing anyone who had or lost a blue baby, most were happy they had healthy babies. My mother-in-law Connie said, “God knew I would not be able to handle a sick baby, so I am always thankful to be blessed with healthy babies.”
A blue baby indeed has a circulation error in their heart, which started early after conception when the heart formed. The error, unknown during pregnancy. After birth, the error in the heart reveals itself. Blue babies are sickly, they do not stay pink after they cry. There are multiple different errors and combinations of errors that occur.
In my book, “Blue Baby and Acute Coronary Revascularization” each surgical procedure to correct one of these errors is detailed in the timeline that each error was understood and a surgical procedure developed, taken into the hospital operating rooms, from the research lab for the benefit of the blue baby and family under the care of a pioneering heart surgeon and team. The more common and simpler errors were studied first.
In the scheme of time, this work took just over thirty years for most of the blue baby errors to be understood, a corrective procedure developed, tested, and successfully implemented in the hospital operating rooms. This body of work is incredible, an achievement of such magnitude and success that a blue baby is now rare. Perhaps even forgotten.
About half way through this surgical tour de force, the preoperative diagnosis was changing from “blue baby” to something specific, such as atrial septal defect. Which was repaired. The diagnostics were improving as the surgeries were developing. Just think about this. These pioneering heart surgeons were going in to perform a heart repair on a blue baby, child, or young person, as an exploration. Once inside the pericardium and looking at the heart, the heart surgeon, could finally confirm a specific defect. This group of heart surgeons were talented. When an unwelcome surprise of a complex defect was found, without a repair, these surgeons were motivated to improve. This motivation translates into the push for better technology to allow more operative time inside a heart to repair combinations of defects. The heart lung machine was this concept to accomplish this goal. The heart lung machine was developed and became commercially available for use in hospital operating rooms by 1960.
The doom, the lack of hope, the inevitable death that arrived for these blue people and their families, proceeding the bold step into heart surgical repairs, was entrenched in parents and families watching and caring for these children who struggled. These blue babies did not die suddenly overnight, they hung on a bit longer, when they were quiet, at rest, did not cry or exert themselves they limped along with slow growth, bouts of pneumonia and other infections. They knew they would die, as did their families.
An editor for my book asked if “many millennia” was an overstatement regarding the doom around blue babies. Not an overstatement and the doom so entrenched that examination of the preserved hearts after death only began in the mid-1600. The pioneering heart teams had to overcome nihilism and taboo to not touch the heart of an alive but suffering blue baby. By 1969, the only blue baby defect without a surgical repair was the most complex and rare, transposition of the great vessels, the complex versions. Every defect that could already be repaired was found in the complex versions, plus involvement of the great vessels, the aorta and pulmonary artery. Blue babies were vulnerable, so weak, yet they did live, for as long as they could, with great care and effort from their families who also struggled. For millennia’s, these babies grew for as long as they could, and they all died early, not reaching child bearing, or old age. Perhaps God knew, this one pioneering heart surgeon could work, and find a way, to learn and manage his own child’s complex transposition heart defect, to dig in, carry on and use his knowledge of the heart to preserve his son’s heart eleven years beyond his expected length of life and save so many people from a heart attack. His son died a happy young man.
So, in getting this story that has become my book, Blue Baby and ACR, from the pioneering heart
surgeon who is internationally known for ACR/acute coronary revascularization, Dr. Ralph Berg, my
uncle, and having the magnitude of the story settle into my soul, I cry, whenever the topic of blue babies
comes up.
Please look for and share:
Coming soon: “When your doctor gives you a life expectancy, what does it mean?”
Presales in September and publication in December for “Blue Baby and ACR”
