Baby Brylee

Give the Gift of a Baby Girl's Smile

Brylee Hepworth radiates cherubic with her smoothly placed blond hair, doll-like blue eyes, endearing smile and tiny pink bow. It all seems at odds with her still healing chest incision.

Just a week before turning five months old, Brylee had life-saving, open heart surgery at The Children’s Hospital on July 31, 2008. “Before the surgery, Dr. Lacour-Gayet told us that he would be using special equipment so he could see her heart. He told us her heart was about the size of her fist,” said Heather Smith, Brylee’s mom. Nearly a week after her surgery, Brylee’s little curled up fist seemed about the size of a walnut as she waved it around in the air, playing and cooing like the healthy infant she now is.

Children’s outreach and expertise fix a tiny heart
At birth, Brylee had been diagnosed with a ventricular septal defect (VSD) and a right ventricle obstruction. The VSD essentially was a hole in her heart and a problem that ranks in the top five for congenital heart defects according to Francois Lacour-Gayet, MD. Lacour-Gayet, Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Children’s and holder of The Barton-Elliman Chair in Pediatric Cardiothoracic Surgery.

Community pediatric cardiologist Dr. Gregory Brames of Colorado Springs had monitored Brylee since birth. Typically, surgery for these types of defects can be delayed until 18 to 24 months. However, in early July 2008 when Brylee had just turned 4 months old, Brames became concerned about her irregular heartbeat and declining oxygen levels. She was struggling to breathe and looking blue when she tried to sit up. Brames called Children’s and arranged for her to be admitted the next day.

Without surgery, the outcome could be heart failure. Heather and dad Cody Hepworth packed up Brylee and headed to Children’s from their home in Pueblo.

Forty-eight hours later, Brylee was recovering in Children’s new Cardiac Intensive Care Unit now just down the hallway from the specially pediatric equipped cardiovascular operating rooms.

A week later, Brylee went home.

Funding world-class pediatric cardiovascular surgery saves lives
Pediatric trained and certified, Lacour-Gayet has performed “1000s” of repairs similar to Brylee’s two defects.

As an endowed chair holder, Lacour-Gayet remains a protected asset to The Children’s Hospital and its patients. The endowed chair, which provides perpetual funding, allows him the security to not just perform cardiac surgery, but to develop new medical techniques that may result in more children surviving congenital heart defects, like a ground breaking artificial heart pump.

Lacour-Gayet is working with Robin Shandas to develop an artificial pump for kids who are born with only one heart ventricle, instead of two. Shandas is a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine.

Their pump would substitute for the right ventricle, the one that pumps de-oxygenated blood from the heart to the lungs. There, the blood gets fresh oxygen before the left ventricle pumps the blood out to the body. The device could be a permanent fix for a patient or stabilize a patient until they required a transplant later in life.

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