The first person on record to receive an injection of stem cells to repair a heart defect was a baby born with a congenital heart defect. A refined version of his stem cell treatment is being developed to mend more children's hearts in the future.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, congenital heart defects affect 1% of children born in the U.S. and the same percentage in the U.K. According to a statement from the University of Bristol in England, baby Finley was born with a birth defect called transposition of the great arteries.
Four days after she was born, Finley had open-heart surgery to have her arteries moved. As Finley's heart function worsened after the 12-hour procedure, he was treated in an intensive care unit. Dr. Caputo, a professor of congenital heart surgery at Bristol Medical School, offered the parents the option of injecting stem cells into the heart.
He didn't know what the outcome would be. "We didn't have anything to lose," said the mother of the child. We had to do everything we could to give him a chance to live.
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Stem cell plaster, or patches containing donated stem cells that can be sewn into the heart during surgery, was being developed at the University of Bristol. As a child gets bigger, the patches won't need to be replaced as often. The plasters could help reduce the number of open-heart surgeries for children.
"We are trying to create living tissue, whether it's a valve or a blood vessel or a patch, that will grow with the child, and that does not degrade," Caputo said in a profile published by the British Heart Foundation That would change their quality of life a lot.
The plasters have been shown to be safe in animals, and with grant money from the British Heart Foundation, Caputo hopes to launch clinical trials in people within two years.
He did not receive the plaster that Caputo is currently developing because he received stem cells under compassionate grounds. He had his second open-heart surgery and got an injection of stem cells.
Two weeks after the stem cell treatment, we noticed a change in the area. He came home when he was six months old on a machine that helped him breathe. We don't know what the future will bring, but we are so grateful for the stem cell treatment that turned his life around, as he might not have lived if it wasn't for it.
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