Every time thirteen year old Ryan Michaels steps to the pitcher’s mound, a crowd watches his every move.
But no one can tell this little league player was born with a serious congenital heart defect, affecting the flow of blood through the right side of his heart.
Ryan had two open-heart surgeries before age two. Doctors needed to repair a hole in the wall between the heart chambers, and a missing pulmonary valve. Doctors told the family Ryan might need additional surgeries as he grew older.
“Because it’s a repeat operation there’s a lot of scarring there. Sometimes the heart can be scarred all the way into the chest wall, and just opening up the chest can be risky because there could be very serious bleeding,” Jonathan Rome, M.D. Director of the Cardiac Catheterization Program at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told Ivanhoe.So when Ryan needed a new heart valve this summer, the Michaels agreed to a newly approved minimally invasive procedure. Doctors at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia inserted a catheter into a vein in Ryan’s leg, and guided an artificial valve, called a melody valve, up to Ryan’s heart. The new valve replaced Ryan’s leaky one, keeping blood flowing in the right direction. Instead of major surgery, Ryan was back on his feet in a few days and focused on ba
seball.“I think about what’s going on in the field. I don’t think about my issue,” Ryan Michaels said.
“He can perform just like everybody else. He’s a normal 13 year old," Bill Michaels, Ryan’s father added.
Living life free of restrictions.
The melody valve is not a permanent fix. It is designed to delay the need for more invasive open-heart surgery. Doctors say because it is a newly approved device, they are not sure how many years the valve will function correctly before another procedure, or additional surgery is needed.
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