A newborn baby's heart is roughly the size of a walnut — which makes open-heart surgery challenging.
Each year, about 10,000 babies in the United States are born with critical heart defects that may require surgery to fix, often fairly soon after birth. In these infants, the two major arteries of the heart could have swapped positions or the left side of the heart may be far too small to pump properly.
Even if their surgeries go well, these babies face perilous recoveries. A complication can arise when blood flows back into the repaired heart, triggering what's known as an ischemia-reperfusion injury. This can stun the organ, triggering extensive damage that requires doctors to place the baby on a lif...
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