Corey Chambers Newsletter August 2021 SoCal Home

SoCal Home

THE GIVING IT BACK AND PAYING IT FORWARD REAL ESTATE NEWS LETTER

August 2021 Boy…it’s Hot &Not Just Outside! RED HOT Opportunities!

You don’t have to be a weather person to predict the weather this time of year. We all know… it’s the hottest time of the year. But that’s not all that’s hot. The economy is red hot too. By all measures, it is a robust economy on the move.

This is GOOD for most reading this, but there will be some exceptions. There always are. An example could be selling a house and making out great, meaning a buyer pays a bit more than they would have not too long ago. And in some areas, the opposite happens. The Seller does not make out that great, but the buyer does. Most homeowners who do NOT have to sell, of course, know this and will hold back on buying or selling. That will, of course, impact supply and demand. Results right now?

A Real Estate Company That Gives Back!

How does this impact you? Well, it is a HOT time to invest in real estate. Single-family, multi-family, even farmland. If you didn’t get the memo, here is a particular clause from our Buyer and Seller Agreements of our VIP Client Program, enabling past clients to create additional wealth through real estate. 

VIP CLIENT PROGRAM: Seller ___ does OR ___ does not wish to participate in Broker’s VIP Client Real Estate Investor Program (REIP), whereby Seller will receive notices of free real estate investor training and notices of real estate investment opportunities by mail, email or phone at times when investment opportunities arise. Seller may opt-out of The REIP at any time. Seller is never obligated to invest in real estate. So, if you or anyone you know likes the idea of making money in real estate using other people’s money, please contact The Corey Chambers Group right away. While these HOT investment opportunities are available. Making gains in assets and wealth is nice! We especially like it because it allows us the opportunity to GIVE more. How about you? 

Go Serve Big Your Referrals Help Kids!

As you probably know, we donate a portion of our income to some AMAZING, worthy causes, like Children’s Healthcare of Los Angeles. It’s one of the country’s leading non-profit children’s hospitals. This year we are on a mission to raise $25,000 for CHLA. Their work in helping kids fight through and survive nasty debilitating diseases like cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, leukemia, as well as their work in other life-threatening childhood diseases.

When we help someone buy or sell a Loft or Condo, like the ones found in Little Tokyo Lofts some of that goes to helping CHLA provide life saving first of it’s kind medical care like you will read about later in this news letter.

Do you have a story about getting care for yourself or someone else at CHLA? Share it here.

At CHLA, they Have performed fist of its kind surgeries to save local kids! As the leading not-for-profit hospital in LA, you probably know they need sponsorships and donations to continue their leading-edge care and keep family expenses to a minimum. We are committed to donating a portion of our income from home sales to this very worthy cause. So, YOUR REFERRALS really do HELP THE KIDS… 

Looking for a great buy on a downtown loft? Fill out the online form.

Who do you know considering buying or selling a home or investing in real estate you could refer to my team? Not only will they benefit from our award-winning service, but the kids at CHLA will benefit as well. So just give me a call or pass my number on to anyone you know considering buying or selling. 

My number is 213-880-9910. You and your referrals mean more than ever to my team and me. As we move forward through this red-hot summer, please know we are incredibly thankful for you and a special part of our business. 

Corey Chambers

Your Home Sold Guaranteed 

213-880-9910

Buying a new home? Sell yours worry free with Corey Chambers Guarantee

Making a Difference! 

Your referrals help us support the life changing medical work of  Childrens Hospital in Los Angeles

As you know, we love making guarantees! Like our Buyer Satisfaction Guarantee: Love the home, or we’ll buy it back! Or our Seller Guarantee: Your Home Sold or We’ll Buy It! And we guarantee that a portion of our income WILL go to support Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles!

A real estate company with experience, proven results and a give-back philosophy! 

Over the last two decades of helping thousands of families sell their home and/or buy another, we have met some wonderful, loving, caring people. 

People like you! So your referrals can rest assured that not only will they get the award-winning service we are known for and the guarantee to back it up, but that a solid portion of the income we receive will go toward a very worthy cause.

Refer your friends, neighbors, associates or family members considering making a move

You can go to www.ReferralsHelpKids.com and enter their contact info online or forward the link to someone you know considering a move. 

Of course you can always call me direct as well at 213-880-9910 

Corey Chambers Team 200 N San Fernando Rd #119 Los Angeles CA 90031 
213-880-991 coreychambers@yahoo.com  Visit us on the web at:

ReferralsHelpKids.com

Why I support ChildrenĘźs Hospital Los Angeles

I grew up right here in the Greater Los Angeles Area, born in Los Angeles County at St. Francis Hospital. I remember when I first heard about a young person close to our family suffering from a nasty disease and getting treated for that at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. It was then that I began to pay closer attention to the work they do at that hospital. Since then, I have learned that it is a collection of hard-working heath care professionals, most making their home right here in the Los Angeles area, all coming together for a common cause. That cause is to help young people overcome unfortunate health issues that life sometimes throws our way. Being a Los Angeles Area California native, I take pride in supporting in a way that I can the good work these people do at Children’s. My team rallies around our annual goal or raising money and donating portions of our income to help Children’s in their quest to heal young people when they needhealing. My team and I are committed to providing outstanding results for buyers and sellers referred to us by our past clients. I have discovered that Children’s Hospital Los Angeles shares similar commitment to their patients. And since their services survive on sponsorships and donations, we are happy to contribute and proud to support them.

Sincerely,

Corey Chambers

A collaboration of 11 hospital teams carries out the lifesaving procedure, a first at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

By Jeff Weinstock

Knuckle bumps are good for casual goodbyes; hugs and kisses for airport partings. But after exchanging both with his mother, Melissa, Mark found that they weren’t enough to seal a preop farewell. Certainly not one of this magnitude.  From the operating room before the day-long dual surgeries that would make him the first heart-liver transplant recipient at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, he asked one of the transplant team members to get a message to his mom.  Melissa heard her phone chime when it arrived: “Mark wanted me to tell you that he loves you.”

Complications from the Fontan

She was 16 when she had Mark, and only seconds after he was born he abruptly stopped crying, indicating something wasn’t right. The doctor came in to explain what it was.

“I was very confused,” Melissa says. “Was there something I did wrong? I remember him drawing out a normal heart for me, and drawing out Mark’s heart.”  The issue was hypoplastic right heart syndrome, a congenital disorder that leaves the right chamber of the heart underdeveloped and unable to pump blood. Doctors have to perform a trio of precisely sequenced surgeries in the baby’s first few years of life to reconfigure the heart so the one good ventricle can take over for the incapacitated side. Over time, the extra burden on the working ventricle can’t be sustained; usually a heart transplant is unavoidable.

Mark tolerated the first two surgeries—one at 5 days old, the other at 6 months—but had complications from the third one, called the Fontan. During the procedure the vein that carries blood back from the body, the inferior vena cava, is disconnected from the heart and attached to the pulmonary artery so blood flows straight to the lungs, sidestepping the nonfunctioning right ventricle altogether. The makeshift “Fontan circulation” produces new threats, though. Elevated blood pressure within the veins can cause blood flow to jam up in the liver, inflicting damage. “The liver and the heart are intimately involved with each other,” CHLA heart surgeon Cynthia Herrington, MD, says. “When the pressures in the Fontan circuit go up, it’s not uncommon for us to see liver failure.” After Mark underwent the procedure in December 2009 at age 3, his liver began to show abnormalities, triggering a particularly malevolent disorder called protein-losing enteropathy, or PLE. Body fluids begin leaking into the intestines, causing diarrhea, the loss of proteins and nutrients—and extreme fatigue.  “I would wake him up in the morning for school,” Melissa says. “He would get ready for his day, and then by the time we got to the stoplight, he would be asleep again.”Over time, his struggles with PLE accelerated Mark’s need for a heart transplant, as his body risked becoming too malnourished to support one. In the summer of 2017, he was listed for a heart transplant. The wait for a donor would reach three years, prompting Mark’s cardiologist, Jondavid Menteer, MD, to push for him to be admitted to the hospital. With Mark as an inpatient, doctors could more forcefully treat his symptoms—and it would also raise his standing on the waiting list.“Having him in the hospital,” Dr. Menteer says, “actively giving him IV nutrition and other medications, allowed us to get his urgency up.”  In October 2020, Mark, now 14, was admitted to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles with the hope of fortifying his system for a transplant—or transplants, Dr. Menteer says. “That was about the same time we also decided his liver was doomed to fail.”

A collaboration of 11 hospital teams carries out the lifesaving procedure, a first at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

By Jeff Weinstock

Knuckle bumps are good for casual goodbyes; hugs and kisses for airport partings. But after exchanging both with his mother, Melissa, Mark found that they weren’t enough to seal a preop farewell. Certainly not one of this magnitude.  From the operating room before the day-long dual surgeries that would make him the first heart-liver transplant recipient at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, he asked one of the transplant team members to get a message to his mom.  Melissa heard her phone chime when it arrived: “Mark wanted me to tell you that he loves you.”

Coming to consensus

Scans showed Mark’s liver was overrun with tumors. They appeared benign, but were growing and could eventually turn cancerous. It was becoming clear that he needed both his heart and liver replaced, taking him into territory only 16 other kids had gone previously—none at CHLA.  Prior to Mark’s case, if a Children’s Hospital patient had advanced heart and liver disease, the heart transplant would be done and perhaps help to heal the liver, if it was still salvageable.”For years that’s what we did,” says Dr. Herrington, Surgical Director of the hospital’s Heart Transplant Program. “We’d do the heart transplant and hope we were in time to get the liver to reverse its pathology.” #chla

But patients whose livers were too far gone were excluded from a transplant because they were judged to be too weak to survive it. That inability to provide treatment tore at Dr. Herrington.

“It was incredibly disheartening,” she says, “to go to families and say, ‘We’re not going to be able to do it. I don’t have anything to offer.’”  Mark’s liver was sick, but not too sick. However, that status would tip before much longer, and leaving the liver alone would sentence Mark and his mother to regularly having the tumors monitored and biopsied for cancer.

“The nodules were getting larger and the liver was filled with them,” Dr. Herrington says. “We either had to commit to doing the liver as well, or not do the heart transplant. We have so many Fontan patients with liver impairment, it was time for us to commit to adding this to our surgical repertoire.”  As they discussed the prospect of a heart-liver transplant, she and Yuri Genyk, MD, Division Chief of Abdominal Organ Transplantation, agreed it was the most sensible, safest path forward. “We were both in the same space with it,” she says. “We were finishing each other’s sentences.”Dr. Menteer was less sure. He sought to be persuaded, quizzing the members of the liver transplant team. “I was asking every last question,” he says. “What happens if we don’t do this? What’s our likelihood of success if we just replaced his heart? What are the complications going to be? I needed to be shown that the risks were justified.”  The abject state of Mark’s liver, the looming cancer threat, and the greater likelihood of the heart transplant’s success if it was joined by a new liver eventually swayed him.  “Ultimately I was convinced by everybody’s expertise that this was a patient who needed a liver transplant.” #entarispowerful

Plans A, B, C and C-apostrophe

It was Dr. Menteer who found in a research database that there were only 16 previous pediatric heart-liver transplants in the U.S. That left the doctors with few colleagues to consult.

“It’s not like I could call somebody and say, ‘Hey, what’s your experience with the last 10 heart-livers you’ve done in a pediatric population?’” Dr. Herrington says.  Instead, she and Dr. Genyk leaned on each other. “You cannot rehearse the operation,” Dr. Genyk says. “But you can plan.”  They proceeded to talk it out, frequently and in rigorous detail. “There was a lot of preoperative strategy and conversation,” Dr. Herrington says. “We had the A plan, we had the B plan, we had the C plan. And if this happened and we had to do, like, C-apostrophe, what would that look like? We had scenarios planned out for pretty much anything that could have been thrown at us.

”They were not alone in having to coordinate their steps. Eleven hospital teams would participate in the two operations. The checkerboard of faces in the Webex meetings stretched to more than 100 squares, Dr. Menteer says. “We had every detail of Mark’s pre-transplant course, transplant donor selection course, transplant operative course a  “I was going to do a heart transplant, which I’ve spent 22 years doing,” Dr. Herrington says. “Yuri did say in the beginning, ‘You know, Cindy, you’re going to do what you do all the time, and I’m going to do what I do all the time. I think it’s going to be fine.’”

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‘An incredible thing’

In early 2021, Melissa received a call from one of the hospital’s transplant coordinators: A donor had been found.

“I just got quiet,” Melissa says. “She said, ‘Melis we have to do more tests,’ so I was waiting for that part.”  She was assured there was no other part. The surgery would be the next morning, pending the review and approval of the donated heart and liver, which came hours later.  Dr. Herrington went in first, at 5:30 a.m., and by noon she had placed Mark’s new heart and turned the operating room over to Dr. Genyk, who over the next several hours transplanted the liver, noting it went smoothly thanks to the excellent function of the donated heart. “That made the operation relatively straightforward for us.”  At 10:30 p.m., after Dr. Herrington returned to the OR to close up Mark’s chest, the exhaustive surgery was done. “Everything went really well,” she says. “There were no surprises.”  After handing Mark over to the ICU staff, Dr. Herrington went home and fell easily to sleep, but was awakened at 3 a.m., startled by something she couldn’t quite sort out. “I woke up in tears,” she says, “wondering, why am I crying? What’s happening?”  The enormity of what she and her colleagues had achieved overcame her. “It was like, oh my god, what have we done? We have done an incredible thing.”  When she got to her office the next day, she wrote a thank-you letter that addressed every individual who participated on surgery day. “I had a page and a half of names,” she says.  She had had her moment and was there a few days afterward when Dr. Genyk, who had been keeping to his routines, had his.“Yuri came to my office. He sat down and closed the door. He said, ‘That was so stressful.’ I said, ‘Yeah, see? You’re having your moment. It was a thing, right?’ He said, ‘Yeah, it was a thing.’”  It will stay a thing, assuming its place as a landmark in the history of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles—the first-ever heart-liver transplant. It doesn’t figure to be the last.  “We have a large Fontan population at CHLA,” Dr. Herrington says. “It makes me feel really good that I now have something to offer them that I know our team is capable of delivering.”  Mark continues to heal, making regular clinic visits to Dr. Menteer. He’s taking immunosuppressant medicines to keep his immune system from rejecting the new organs. A biopsy of his heart showed no signs of mutiny.  “He looks fantastic,” Dr. Menteer says. “He’s got more energy, he’s eating like crazy. He doesn’t have any PLE symptoms. I imagine that six months to a year from now, it will be night-and-day difference. He’ll be well-nourished, more fit and feeling better in every aspect.”  There are a few food restrictions Mark has to follow, so he’s trying some workarounds. Raw sushi is out; instead he has baked salmon rolls. In place of pomegranates—too acidic—he eats grapes. Steak is OK, but he can’t have his preferred medium-rare.  “Well-done is good too,” he says.   “I’ve gotten used to it.”  

He’s learning to live with substitutes, including the two that will give him life for decades more.How you can help:

Refer your friends, neighbors, associates or family members considering making a move: www.ReferralsHelpKids.com or call Corey at 213-880-9910.

Copyright Š This free information provided courtesy L.A. Loft Blog with information provided by Corey Chambers, Realty Source Inc, DRE 01889449; MPR Funding Inc NMLS 2000513. We are not associated with the seller, homeowner’s association or developer. For more information, contact 213-880-9910 or visit LALoftBlog.com  Licensed in California. All information provided is deemed reliable but is not guaranteed and should be independently verified. Properties subject to prior sale or rental. This is not a solicitation if buyer or seller is already under contract with another broker.

Corey Chambers Real Estate Newsletter April 2021 SoCal Home – Your Referrals Help the Kids

Here Comes the Tax Man.  And Here Comes a Tax Break:

TAX Day Delay!! IRS extends tax deadline to May 17, 2021.  I recently read where we were working Jan. 1 through June 30th of each year, just to pay all of our taxes. In Canada, add another month or two. After that, you keep all you make. Prior to that, 100% goes to the government in some form or fashion to pay for some kind of government worker, work program, social program, defense, project, health care, common good, common projects, emergency bailouts etc. Whatever you want to call it, April 15th is usually TAX day; the deadline for filing your federal in-come taxes in the U.S.A. But not this year. #coreychambers #realestate #news

So, in celebration of this special time of year, let’s talk TAX relief. If you received last month’s letter from me, you will recall our goal of trying to raise $25,000.00 for Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, the areas #1 Not for Profit Hospital for Young People. But – we need your help and I believe you can benefit from the TAX relief as well.  #chla #referralshelpkids Just down the street from where I am typing this, CHLA has a full house of kids fighting for their lives. For them and their parents’ taxes are not “top of mind”, health is. Living is. Surviving is. As you may have heard, Children’s Hospital is front and center in the fight against nasty diseases that destroy or cut short the lives of Children. Things like Cancer, Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, Leukemia, as well as leading the way in early diagnosis of autism and miracle working around spinal cord injuries. We are thankful to have such a wonderful facility close by, doing such great work to help heal and save young people.   |   Blog Video

So even though we are trying to figure out how much we owe the tax man, many are simply hoping they can be here to actually pay taxes. This is why we here at the Corey Chambers Team have resolved to do what we can to help.

For every house we sell this year, we are donating a portion of our income to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Our goal, again, is to raise $25,000 to help them in their quest to Heal, Save, Cure and Comfort Children under their care.This is where we need your help and how you can benefit at the same time…

Charitable contributions are tax deductible to a point. Rather than give your money to the government, you should consider making a donation to a charity. I believe it will somehow come back to you, well beyond a simple tax deduction. A core value at our company is “the size of the hole you give through is directly proportionate to the size of the hole you receive through.”  Either way, your referrals are in good hands and help us contribute to a good cause.  Life moves fast for some and we are eager to make the Home Selling and Buying experience a smooth rewarding one. Over the last two decades of helping thousands of families sell their home and/or buy another, we have met some wonderful, loving, caring people. People like you! So, your referrals, those you know considering a move, that we help – you can rest assured that not only will they get the award-winning service we are known for, but that a solid portion of the income we receive from the transaction will go toward a very worthy cause. It’s easy to refer those you know considering buying or selling a home. Here are the options again: 1. You can go to www.ReferralsHelpKids.com and enter their contact info on line or forward the link to who you know considering a move. 2. Of course you can always call me direct as well at 213-880-9910.

Why I support Children’s Hospital Los Angeles

I grew up right here in the Greater Los Angeles Area, born in Los Angeles County at St. Francis Hospital. I remember when I first heard about a young person close to our family suffering from a nasty disease and getting treated for that at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. It was then that I began to pay closer attention to the work they do at that hospital. Since then, I have learned that it is a collection of hard-working healthcare professionals, most making their home right here in the Los Angeles area, all coming together for a common cause. That cause is to help young people overcome unfortunate health issues that life sometimes throws our way. Being a Los Angeles Area California native, I take pride in supporting in a way that I can the good work these people do at Children’s. My team rallys around our annual goal or raising money and donating portions of our income to help Children’s in their quest to heal young people when they need healing. My team and I are committed to providing outstanding results for buyers and sellers referred to us by our past clients. I have discovered that Children’s Hospital Los Angeles shares similar commitment to their patients. And since their services survive on sponsorships and donations, we are happy to contribute and proud to support them.

Sincerely,

P.S. The story of this young person enclosed may cause you to look at your loved ones differently. It did me. Check it out.

It’s easy to refer those you know considering buying or selling a home.  Here are the Options Again:  Enter their contact information at www.ReferralsHelpKids.com, call me direct or pass my number on:  213-880-9910.

Contact Us

Your Home Sold GUARANTEED or I’ll Buy It*
Corey Chambers Team
200 N San Fernando Rd #119, Los Angeles, CA 90031
(213) 880-9910
coreychambers@yahoo.com
Visit us on the web at www.ReferralsHelpKids.com

A Pair of Daring Heart Procedures Save Preemie Alex’s Life

Combining expertise with ingenuity, a team of cardiovascular specialists fixes a rare birth defect in a premature baby.

Noa stood at the starting line, slightly crouched down, right foot in front of the left. He was so nervous, he was shaking. — By Jeff Weinstock

Sarah Badran, MD, knows her audience. “Let me know if I lose you, all right?” she says.

An interventional cardiologist at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Dr. Badran starts into a plainspoken description of blood circulation that she keeps for the layperson, whether an anxious parent or an easily baffled writer.

She calls on it here to illustrate the birth defect that led her to perform a virtually unprecedented cardiac catheterization procedure on tiny Alex, born Oct. 26, 2020, at 26 weeks with his lungs unattached to his heart, creating a disrupted blood flow that threatened his life.

She begins with a familiar association to explain how one’s blood moves oxygen from the lungs out to the body: “The blood is like an Uber driver,” Dr. Badran says. By the time she finishes, Alex’s disorder is understood and ready for retelling.

In normal circulation, the lungs load the blood with oxygen and send it through the pulmonary veins to the heart’s left atrium, and then out to the body’s organs through the aorta. Then depleted of oxygen, the blood returns to the right side of the heart before getting pumped back into the lungs, and the whole circuit repeats. Before birth, this exchange is formed anatomically, as the pulmonary veins become anchored to the back of the left side of the heart.

In rare instances—1 in 10,000 births—that attachment doesn’t develop. The pulmonary veins “just get lost,” Dr. Badran says, draining the blood out elsewhere within the body and leaving it without any road back to the heart, a birth defect called total anomalous pulmonary venous return (TAPVR).

“What generally happens is, you have a beautiful little baby, they’re born, and then they turn completely blue. That’s usually a big, big emergency.”

To the liver and back

The condition is not easy to see on a prenatal scan because fetal circulation doesn’t involve the still-developing lungs, but instead draws oxygen from the mother’s placenta, so blood flow tends to appear fine.

Alex’s abnormality wasn’t discovered until a week after he was born, when his breath began to grow short. An echocardiogram revealed he had TAPVR and that his pulmonary veins were depositing blood into his liver. The diagnosis got him transferred to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

Alex’s blood, however, was managing to return to his heart through a blood vessel located in the liver called the ductus venosus. The same vessel is employed in utero, though that’s by nature’s design, as it passes oxygenated blood to the heart after receiving it from the umbilical vein, which extends out of the placenta. Shortly after birth, that ductus venosus typically closes off and a new breathing apparatus, led by the lungs, takes over.

The irregularities caused by prematurity may have saved Alex, as his ductus stayed partially open, allowing blood to stream through it and reach his heart. Once there, the blood would pass from the right to left chamber through a hole called the patent foramen ovale, and then, freshly oxygenated, flow out to the body.

“It was a wackadoodle circulation,” Dr. Badran says, “but that’s how he was staying alive.”

The one chance to save him

That passage through the ductus venosus, however, was on its way to sealing shut, so some intervention had to be made. Dr. Badran and her colleague in CHLA’s Heart Institute, Neil Patel, MD, discussed next steps with cardiothoracic surgeon John Cleveland, MD, who would do the open-heart surgery that Alex needed to fix his congenital defect. They agreed that the operation was too risky for a baby so unstable.

The safer option was to wait until Alex developed more, as close to full term as they could get him, before Dr. Cleveland would operate. In the interim, the plan was for Dr. Badran and Dr. Patel to put a stent into the ductus venosus to keep it open so it would continue to convey blood to Alex’s heart.

That decision meant Dr. Badran and Dr. Patel were faced with trying something that, according to Dr. Cleveland, had only been done a handful of times worldwide, and never at Children’s Hospital: stenting a ductus venosus in a premature baby. The procedure is so unusual because TAPVR, as uncommon as it is across all births, is hardly ever reported in preemies.

Dr. Badran and Dr. Patel were unfazed. They were confident they could apply fundamental techniques and their accumulated expertise to an entirely new predicament.

“The thing about pediatric interventional cardiology is that it’s always like that,” Dr. Badran says. “Everything is so rare we’re always kind of engineering our way through these types of situations. I know everything I need to know about premature babies, and I teach embryology in med school. I know everything there is to know about the ductus venosus system, blood flow, and what the vessels are like, how they’re shaped, and why they close and why they open.

“The only chance to save Alex was to try to stent this open, which would not be fixing the problem. It would just basically be making it like he hadn’t been born yet.”

The day after the determination was made to try to install a stent, Alex’s blood pressure and oxygen levels began to fall, signs the ductus venosus was closing. The doctors were compelled to move Alex, only 17 days old, into the catheterization lab. Dr. Badran recounts the delicacy of the procedure—and exults over its success.

“To take this tiny little person,” she says, “and put an IV in his neck vein and try to find this threadlike thing, thinner than a wire—we almost couldn’t find it—then stretch it with a balloon and put a stent in—it was a technical tour de force. It worked, and it stabilized him.”

Restoring the anatomy

He was stabilized but not safe, and would spend the next several weeks watched by neonatologist Jennifer Shepherd, MD, in the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation Newborn and Infant Critical Care Unit. “When I heard we were getting a baby who was 26 weeks with obstructed infradiaphragmatic TAPVR,” she says, “my first thought was, how are we going to keep him alive? It just was unheard of.”

As they worked to maintain Alex’s circulation until he reached an age and a weight suitable for surgery, Dr. Shepherd and her team had to respond to any unfavorable movement in his oxygen levels or blood tests. “We had a very low threshold to get echocardiograms to make sure that stent was still open.”

Alex made it to 37 weeks in gestational age, but not without needing more time in the cath lab to keep the stented area from closing. At 37 weeks, imaging showed the ductus venosus was again narrowing, so on Jan. 5, Dr. Cleveland brought Alex to the operating room to establish a connection between his lungs and heart. Though Dr. Cleveland had done the procedure often, Alex’s size—still only 4 pounds—added to the risk.

“Repair of total anomalous pulmonary venous return is a routine operation; we probably see six or seven cases a year,” he says. “There’s just less room for error when children are that small.”

With Alex on the bypass machine and his body cooled to about 65 degrees Fahrenheit, Dr. Cleveland removed his heart from his chest and began the repair. He tied off what he calls the “anomalous pathway,” the ductus venosus that had kept Alex’s blood flowing, then sewed the pulmonary veins to the back of the left atrium, where they should have originally attached. He set Alex’s heart back into his chest, warmed his body up and returned him to intensive care.

“Everything went well,” Dr. Cleveland says. “The goal of the operation was to restore normal anatomy, which we did.”

Follow-up scans have all looked good. With Dr. Patel staying on as Alex’s cardiologist, Dr. Cleveland expects his work has ended. “He’ll get echocardiograms because that’s part of the deal, but this should be the only heart operation he needs for this condition.”

It’s not often that open-heart surgery on a newborn is the postscript, but while it culminated Alex’s heart repair, from all accounts what set it apart was the opening act. Stenting the ductus venosus on a preemie that small was not merely delicate but untried.

“From my review of the literature, nobody else in California had done it,” Dr. Cleveland says. “I think it was a California first.”

While exhilarated by the achievement, Dr. Badran saves her strongest, lengthiest accolades for the efforts of the anesthesiologists and the neonatologists and other support staff, “the village that it took,” she says, to keep Alex intact so she and Dr. Patel could do their work.

“To transport such a tiny baby, that sick, get him safely on the cath lab table without dislodging the breathing tube, and give him the right medications, and the way the nurses and the techs all coordinated, and hospital maintenance heating up the cath lab to 82 degrees to make sure he wouldn’t get cold—they somehow managed to keep him alive while we found that vein.

“We had stented tiny things on lots of babies, getting into small little blood vessels and opening them, but the amount of cooperation and collaboration between all the divisions, it was just a beautiful orchestration of teamwork.”

Article and photos courtesy Children’s Hospital Los Angeles

How you can help:

Refer your friends, neighbors, associates or family members considering making a move:

www.ReferralsHelpKids.com or call Corey at 213-880-9910.

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 Copyright Š This free information provided courtesy L.A. Loft Blog and LAcondoInfo.com with information provided by Corey Chambers, Realty Source Inc, BRE#01889449 We are not associated with the homeowner’s association or developer. For more information, contact (213) 880-9910 or visit LAcondoInfo.com  Licensed in California. All information provided is deemed reliable but is not guaranteed and should be independently verified. Properties subject to prior sale or rental. This is not a solicitation if buyer or seller is already under contract with another broker.