Medicine: Open Heart

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During the last three months of her pregnancy, pious, 24-year-old Mrs. Esperanza Sacramenta Rafael of Manila lay in bed gazing at a chromo of Christ pointing to his exposed, bleeding heart. Last fortnight, in a small hospital in the Tondo slum district, Mrs. Rafael gave birth to a seven-pound baby girl, named Maria Corazon (Mary Heart). The baby's heart, faintly beating, lay on her chest, outside her body. Mrs. Rafael's friends, who thronged to the hospital, stoutly maintained that the baby's condition was due to Mrs. Rafael's daily adoration of the Sacred Heart.

The exposed heart was a case of rare ectopia cordis, of which 28 cases have been recorded since 1706. The deformity may be caused by failure of embryonic chest cells to fuse in the middle. Since Maria's heart was unprotected by a membrane, Dr. Guillermo del Castillo carefully covered it with a thin stemless cocktail glass, and placed the baby, who was otherwise normal, in an incubator.

There she squirmed, squinted at her nurses, swallowed milk through an eyedropper. Her heart beat regularly, and when she cried it bounced up & down on her chest like a tiny red rubber ball. Dr. Jesus Celius of the University of Santo Tomas refused to consider an operation to place her heart inside her chest. Reason: its aorta (main artery) would have to be shut off during the operation. Last week, after living seven days, little Maria Corazon died of pneumonia.