LOS ANGELES (Feb. 11, 2025) — Raphael Louise Wasserman, who was born with a serious heart condition, has had more medical interventions in the first months of his life than some adults will ever have. But now, as Raphael’s first birthday approaches, he and his family are looking forward to a life filled with more birthday celebrations than doctors’ appointments.
Raphael and his twin sister, Antonia, who was born without a heart condition, will celebrate their birthdays on Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14, at Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children’s. They’ll be joined by their mothers, friends and family as well as the nurses, physicians and staff members who took care of them.
“Heart defects are the most common birth defect,” said Richard Kim, MD, director of Pediatric and Congenital Heart Surgery and surgical director of the Guerin Family Congenital Heart Program in the Smidt Heart Institute and Guerin Children’s. “Thankfully, we can now intervene early so babies and young children can get better quickly.”
Mothers Claire and Ashley credit the close attention their children received with getting Raphael the care he needed. Soon after he was born, a nurse noticed Raphael had a heart murmur. A couple of days later, he had open-heart surgery to fix the malformations that were preventing his heart from pumping blood properly.
But one issue remained: One of Raphael’s heart blood vessels had become so narrow it was affecting his heart. In August, Raphael became one of the first children to receive the first stent specifically designed for babies and children. The stent was studied at Cedars-Sinai, and Evan Zahn, MD, director of the Pediatric Congenital Heart Program at Guerin Children’s and the Smidt Heart Institute, helped develop it. The stent’s design allowed it to be placed during a minimally invasive procedure rather than through an open-heart surgery.
“It was so rewarding to care for Raphael, who had especially complicated structural heart defects,” said fetal and pediatric cardiologist Myriam Almeida-Jones, MD. “Thanks to our team-based approach and our latest advances, we were able to improve Raphael’s heart so he and his family can have many more milestones to celebrate.”
Read more on the Cedars-Sinai Blog: Q&A—Congenital Heart Defects
