A baby girl who was diagnosed with a rare life threatening condition called ectopia cordis which doctors said needed to be corrected within hours has been successfully operated on in what is referred to be a UK first.
After a nine week pregnancy scan, baby Vanellope Hope Wilkins was diagnosed with the condition, which had caused her heart and part of her stomach to develop outside her body.
Fate has proved wrong earlier believe by Surgeons at Glenfield Hospital, a specialist children's heart centre in Leicester, who were skeptical that baby Vanellope could be saved.
Surgeons had earlier recommended to her parents that her life be terminated owing to her little chance of survival which was below 10%, but her mother Naomi Findley said that was not an option for her.
Earlier on Frances Bu'Lock, the consultant paediatric cardiologist at the hospital said Vanellope's chances of survival looked bleak and that she had seen one in foetal life around 20 years ago which the pregnancy had to be terminated.
Vanellope is considered to be the first person to successfully undergo treatment of ectopia cordis in the United Kingdom, after three surgeries, to move her heart into her chest and create an artificial rib cage and sternum.
She was due to be delivered on Christmas Eve but was born by caesarean section on 22 November and the life-saving surgery began within the hour of her birth.
Her father said: "What they said is, when the baby is born she has got to be able to breathe in our oxygen. Twenty minutes went by and she was still shouting her head off, it made us so joyful and teary."
Vanellope's doctors say so far her health appears to be normal outside of her heart condition, but it is impossible to say for certain. June Davison, senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said Vanellope's future health would now depend on her ongoing treatment.
