Infant's Life a Medical Drama // She's Survived Heart Surgery, Lung Failure

By Kim Archer
1/16/1992

Two-month-old Katelyn Hadlock has been through more physically
than most people 200 times her age.
The Fairfax infant was born with a rare form of a congenital
heart defect called truncus arteriosus.
She had no main artery to her lungs and no pulmonary valve,
said pediatric surgeon Dr. Richard Ranne.
If that wasn't enough, Katelyn also had a hole between the
two lower chambers of her heart, Ranne said.
Three weeks after her birth, she underwent surgery at St.
Francis Hospital to correct the defect.
"You have to do it before their lungs are damaged," Ranne
said. "That's sort of the trend in all congenital heart
problems."
Ranne used a homograft - tissue from a donated pulmonary
artery and pulmonary valve - to correct the defect. He closed
the hole with a synthetic patch.
Then, more drama. Shortly after surgery, Katelyn's lungs
began to fail.
Ranne placed her on an Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenator,
which circulates and oxygenates the infant's blood outside
the body.
For the past three years, St. Francis was the only hospital
in Oklahoma with an ECMO.
Now, Children's

Hospital of Oklahoma in Oklahoma City has
a new machine ready for use, a spokeswoman said. Before
that, the hospital took babies to Tulsa or Lubbock, Texas,
for ECMO treatment, she said.
The machine is used mostly on newborns. But Ranne used it
to save Katelyn.
After five days, the machine came off.
"To my knowledge, this had never been done in Oklahoma
before. I learned it in Boston," Ranne said. "This is
just the best family I've ever worked with. It was very
satisfying to be able to give their child back to them."
And Katelyn has survived it all - an unusual heart defect,
a nine-hour operation and lung failure.
"She's such a hard fighter. We're really lucky that she
weighed 8 pounds and 13 ounces and that she's a girl. They
told us girls are stronger than boys," said Katelyn's mother,
Chris.
"And we just appreciate so much all the nurses and doctors
at St. Francis," she said. "You couldn't beat the nurses.
They gave a lot of support."
Katelyn's father, Joby, says his daughter is happy and never
once complained about all she had to go through.
"She does a lot of smiling. And she doesn't hardly even
cry. I guess she's so used to the pain,," he said.
"She came through it like a champ. And I tell you, she's
changed all of us around. We were taking a lot of things
for granted."
Ranne hopes that Katelyn's life is as normal as can be.
But more surgeries await her, he said.
Homografts must be the proper size for the body and they
do not grow, he said.
So Katelyn will have to have the homografts replaced at
age 2 or 3 and then at age 6 or 8.
By then, surgeons may be able to install an adult-sized
homograft, he said.
Tuesday, Ranne reduced Katelyn's oxygen intake to only at
nighttime. The oxygen is helping repair damage done when
her lungs failed, he said.
"This is on the leading edge of what we're doing for infants,"
Ranne said. "It's complex and it requires donated tissues
and a lot of hospital support and technological support.
And we had all of that."