Baby with heart outside body survives

A newborn with a condition where the heart protrudes outside the body has been successfully treated for the first time in South Korea. Seo-rin was born in April. Her heart, the size of a ping-pong ball, protrudes outside her chest, with the beating visibly seen.

In most cases of this rare condition called ectopiacordis where the heart is located outside the body, babies die before birth. Even if she was born, with no sternum and ribs to protect the heart, most babies don’t make it past three days. To save Seo-rin, medical teams from six departments at Asan Medical Center came together.

They placed a ventilator and carried out three operations during the first month of her birth, and doctors succeeded in pushing her heart into the chest. This marks the first successful treatment of a newborn with ectopiacordis in Korea.