Pregnant with her third baby, Sharon Savino knew something was terribly wrong.
The 25-year-old woman had developed a bad cough in the weeks before Christmas last year, and felt constantly exhausted as she ended her second trimester. At times, her heart would race.
“I thought it was just from the pregnancy,” Savino said — until the day she coughed up blood.
Shocked and scared, Savino went to the emergency room near her home in Farmingville, Long Island. Doctors sent her home with medicine for bronchitis, and couldn’t say why the blood had appeared.
When it happened again, a worried Savino went to her obstetricians at Stony Brook University Hospital, where a full battery of tests revealed the alarming truth: an egg-sized tumor on the left side of her heart.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Savino said. “I just never expected I would hear that, especially when I’m so young. I was shocked.”
Savino’s tumor, an atrial myxoma, presented a serious and immediate health threat, said Dr. James Taylor, chief of the division of cardiothoracic surgery at Stony Brook.
The tumor could have obstructed her mitral valve at any time, causing sudden death. Segments of the tumor could also break free and travel within the blood stream, leading to organ damage or stroke.
“It’s not a malignant tumor — not invading,” Taylor said. “But because of its size it causes problems inside the heart. Something needed to be done during that hospital visit.”
Doctors then had a difficult choice: perform open-heart surgery on the 27-weeks-pregnant Savino to remove the tumor, or deliver the baby preterm and wait until Savino healed from her cesarean section before doing heart surgery.
Ultimately, they decided the tumor was too dangerous to wait, and Savino underwent heart surgery Jan. 17 while her baby boy remained in utero.
While this type of open-heart surgery is not unusual, performing it on a pregnant woman is rare and fraught with risks. Looking through medical literature, Savino’s doctors found only 17 other cases like hers in the world.
The heart-lung bypass machine used during the surgery can impair blood supply to the fetus, making the baby’s heart rate drop rapidly. In some cases, the stress could induce labor.
“What we were trying to do is reduce the amount of time on the heart-lung machine and reduce the amount of time her heart was arrested, when we actually operate inside of the heart,” Taylor said.
Most atrial myxoma patients spend about 45 minutes on the heart-lung machine and 25 to 30 minutes with the heart stopped during surgery.
“For Sharon, we were able to reduce that to 18 minutes on the machine with her heart arrested for only 12 minutes,” Taylor said.
Savino was a brave patient, said her obstetrician Dr. Gerald Quirk, who monitored the baby during the surgery.
“She’s a low-stress person,” said Quirk “[She knew] what was going on without panicking and without being distraught. She asked the appropriate questions.”
Savino remembers feeling calm until right before she went into surgery.
“Then it hit me, and I started crying. My mom was there, she started crying. I guess it wasn’t real to me before then,” she said.
She remained in the hospital for about a week after her surgery as doctors watched for signs of preterm labor, which can occur after a stressful event.
She then spent the final two months of her pregnancy at home, anxiously awaiting her scheduled c-section in April.
“It was rough,” Savino recalled. “I couldn’t wait to get him out just to see that everything was okay. I was a little nervous not knowing.”
To everyone’s relief, baby Maximus arrived healthy April 2, weighing in at 7 pounds, 3 ounces.
After Maximus was born, “I thought, ‘I can’t believe I made it,'” Savino said. “He’s healthy, and I’m still going.”
Two weeks later, life is finally getting back to normal for Savino and her partner, Russell Daniels, 27. They are also parents to Russell, 4, and Shallyssa, 2.
But Savino won’t ever forget what she went through to bring baby Maximus into the world.
“I felt relief, to know he was healthy and survived the surgery,” Savino said. “It’s still amazing.”
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