(COLUMBUS, Ohio) – Just 36 months into her life, Zoey Jones had spent 23 months in the hospital. Zoey was born with a rare defect known as VACTERL syndrome, which, among other issues, left her esophagus unattached to her trachea, her stomach unattached to her small intestine and caused serious issues in the development of her heart and lungs. “We’ve had 13 surgeries, 3 open heart surgeries, 7 cardiac arrest and 5 strokes,” said her mother Torri Goddard. “Zoey has had a very long road.”
Eventually doctors in Zoey’s hometown of Nashville determined that she needed a heart/lung transplant. But a trip to Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio for a second opinion, would change Zoey’s life dramatically.
“It’s extremely uncommon, but with what we found, she certainly did not need a lung transplant and I felt we may be able to save her from a heart transplant, as well,” said Darren Berman, MD, co-Director of the Cardiac Catheterization and Interventional Therapy in The Heart Center at Nationwide Children’s.
During a routine procedure to determine the condition of Zoey’s heart and lungs in the cath lab, doctors found that blocking some of the blood flow to her lungs by using a vascular plug to close off one of her surgically-placed shunts lowered the pressure in her lung arteries enough that operating was possible. Thanks to that discovery and the operation she desperately needed, today, Zoey is thriving.
