Born With Her Heart Outside Her Chest, Baby Audrina Went Home

Little Audrina Cardenas entered the world with a condition so rare that most families never hear its name until a doctor says it out loud.

Ectopia cordis occurs in only a handful of births per million. Part of Audrina’s heart developed outside her chest, unprotected by the bone and muscle that usually keep that organ safe. Historically, about 90 percent of babies with the condition are stillborn or die within the first days of life.

Her mother, Ashley Cardenas of Midland, Texas, learned of the diagnosis at 16 weeks. She was given grim options. She chose surgery — and Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston.

Audrina was born Oct. 15, 2012. The next day, a multidisciplinary team began a delicate operation that lasted more than six hours. Heart surgeon Dr. Charles D. Fraser Jr., plastic surgeon Dr. Larry Hollier, and general surgeon Dr. David Wesson were among those who worked to create space inside her tiny chest, place the exposed portion of the heart where it belonged, and close the wall with stretched skin and muscle.

It was not a simple “put the heart back in.” Doctors had to reconstruct a cavity that nature had not finished. They then protected what they had saved.

Audrina survived the operation. She spent 3½ months in the hospital, cared for by dozens of physicians, nurses, and therapists. On Jan. 23, 2013, she was discharged wearing a custom external heart shield — a hard reminder that her chest still needed help doing what other children’s chests do on their own. Later surgery was planned for a more permanent internal shield as she grew.

Her future was never promised to be ordinary. She would need lifelong cardiology follow-up. But she left the hospital alive, in her mother’s arms, after a diagnosis that usually ends in a funeral.

That is why her story traveled. Not because the science was easy, but because a baby who should not have had a chance was carried through the doors toward home.

Sources: Texas Children’s Hospital announcements (Nov. 2012–Jan. 2013), PR Newswire, Houston Public Media, and the Houston Chronicle on Audrina Cardenas’s ectopia cordis repair and discharge.