Supporting Families. Saving Lives.
"Get my baby to Mount Sinai!” a frantic Tenise Rutledge yelled into the phone last fall, when her daughter’s Brooklyn school called to say she fainted tying her sneaker and was being rushed to Woodhull Hospital.
Ayana Rutledge, 8, had a heart rhythm disorder diagnosed at birth by Mount Sinai cardiologist Dr. Barry Love, and her mom wasn’t taking chances with another hospital.
“I was beside myself: ‘How could this be happening? ” Rutledge remembered thinking as she raced from her job in midtown to her daughter’s side at Woodhull.
A few hours later, Ayana was transferred to Mount Sinai — ranked the second-best children’s hospital in the city — and Love was on the case, trying to figure out whether his patient passed out because something went wrong with her heart.
When Love, who is director of pediatric electrophysiology, implanted a pacemaker into a newborn Ayana in 2004, he programmed it to record her heart activity if it ever went faster than 240 beats per minute.
Now a readout from the device told him that at 8:31 a.m. on Sept. 27, her heart clocked an average rate of 273 beats. At one point, the organ hit 349 beats.
“With that fast a rate, the heart is no longer pumping but quivering,” Love said. “It’s a scary and humbling moment as a physician because you must make the right decision quickly or you can lose the patient.”
While it might have taken a battery of tests at another hospital to rule out conditions that could cause fainting, Love was able to make that fast diagnosis.
Ayana’s congenital disorder, Long QT Syndrome, (LQTS), was to blame. The pacemaker had kept erratic rhythms at bay for seven years, but she needed a new safeguard.
Love inserted a defibrillator into the grade-schooler so that if her heart goes into another abnormal rhythm, it will be shocked back to normal.
It sounds terrifying, of course. But Love says the good news is that Ayana’s syndrome is treatable with medication and vigilance. She can live a full life, though she may need to limit physical activity and avoid certain medications.
Long QT Syndrome is often hereditary, so Sinai’s geneticists tested Tenise Rutledge, 37, and her husband, Anthony, 44, to see if they carried the gene.
Rutledge tested positive, and she now has an accessory to match her daughter’s: a defibrillator that will protect her if her own heart ever goes rogue.
“He saved two lives Ayana’s and mine,” said Rutledge. SOURCE: NY Daily News Written by, Heidi Evans http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/heartfelt-care-mt-sinai-doctors-save-life-brooklyn-girl-congenital-heart-disorder-implanting-defibrillator-article-1.1115956