KARACHI: A baby born in Qatar Hospital was shifted to the National Institute of Child Health (NICH) on Thursday to treat the rare ectopia cordis malformation he suffers in which his heart protrudes outside thorax – the first case of its kind according to the medical community in Sindh.

The child born to a resident of Orangi Town, the wife of Wajid Asghar, on Wednesday evening was shifted to the NICH hours later as the Qatar hospital lacked proper facility to look after him.

“The boy has been kept in an incubator in the NICH nursery for a day,” said Dr Arshad Domki, deputy director at the NICH, while speaking to Dawn.

He added that the infant would be moved to the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) on Friday. “We have talked to NICVD officials for the transfer of the child to them tomorrow since our hospital has no facility for cardiac surgery,” said Dr Domki.

So far, said the NICH official, the hospital staff had found the baby as chubby and in good health. “He is healthy with apparently no respiratory problem.”

But this was a rare case as no one in the medical community had ever claimed of witnessing any such case. “We have seen such a case for the first time. It must be a rare disorder in the world,” said the NICH doctor.

NICVD officials said they had got communication from the NICH about the child with his heart beating outside his chest.

“We have been informed by the NICH officials about that child,” Dr Hameedullah Malik, adviser to the NICVD director, told Dawn.

“Our surgeons will examine the baby tomorrow when he will be formally handed over to our doctors,” he said.

The first and foremost thing that doctors would look at would be to ascertain whether the boy’s heart was healthy or that too required treatment, he added.

“We can’t say anything concrete at this stage. Anything about the possible treatment of the child and chances of his survival can only be deliberated upon after he goes under a detailed examination,” said Dr Malik.

Apart from heart surgeons, plastic surgeons could also get involved in the child’s surgery if it was required, he said.

Asked if treatment of such malformation was possible in Pakistan or the child would need to be sent abroad, Dr Malik said it could be answered after a report by the surgeons who would examine the boy.

Experts said the occurrence of ectopic cordis was eight per one million births. The malformation is classified according to location of the ectopic heart, and is called as cervical, thoracic, thoraco-abdominal and abdominal. They said most of the known cases pertained to thoracic and thoraco-abdominal ectopia cordis.

Officials said there were cases of successful surgeries of the malformation in the world, but the rate of mortality remained high.

Published in Dawn, April 29th, 2016