Connecticut Children’s saved a baby who had open heart surgery. Doctors now have a new hybrid OR and plan to improve the lives of many more.

For baby Ellis Schwartz-Mosca and his parents Alyse and Mike, it was a very special day at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center.

The hospital this week unveiled its new pediatric hybrid catheterization laboratory and operating room, which allows surgery, interventional cardiology and radiology in one place. The new space gives specialists the opportunity to give surgical care that is “safer, faster, and of the highest quality,” hospital officials said.

The equipment includes advanced radiology and electrophysiology technology, X-ray, a three-dimensional electro-anatomic mapping system, fluoroscopy, or live X-Ray, ultrasound and echocardiology, said Dr. Shai Upadhyay, Connecticut Children’s division head for cardiology.

“The most impressive thing is that imaging can be performed in the hybrid OR just before the surgery to help plan the procedure. It can be done during the surgery to identify the important anatomy and the disease. And after the surgery to evaluate the results of the surgery or the interventions,” he said.

“While all the technology in medicine is impressive, we always know that the most important are the children whose future is shaped by this space,” he said.

Children just like baby Ellis Schwartz-Mosca.

According to Upadhyay, Oct. 27 will mark the one year anniversary of when Ellis had the world’s first and smallest mechanical heart valve implanted in his heart at the hospital.

While he has recovered well, Ellis will eventually require two future surgeries, once his heart grows big enough. By that time, the valve will need to be replaced and he will be able to get those vital procedures done in the new hybrid OR room.

The baby’s father, Mike Schwartz-Mosca, said that when his wife, Alyse, was 20 weeks pregnant, they went to have their anatomy scan, where they found an abnormality with Ellis’ heart.

Their healthcare team referred them to Connecticut Children’s, where they discovered it was an extremely serious issue: a condition called critical aortic stenosis and that parts of the left side of Ellis’ heart were too small. To survive, Ellis would need intensive care from the moment he was born, and a heart procedure within a few days, hospital staff said.

Over the next few months, they monitored the pregnancy very closely kept the parents updated on how it was progressing.

As soon as Ellis was born, hospital staff whisked him away to have his first procedure, which was a balloon valvuloplasty, which uses a “long, thin catheter and placed a tiny balloon in Ellis’ aortic valve and inflated it, opening the valve to allow more blood to flow through it to Ellis’ brain and body,” according to hospital staff.

After Ellis’ recovery for three weeks at the hospital, he was sent home. However, by the third week, the parents knew that something was not right with their son and said they took him back to the hospital.

They were told then that Ellis had heart failure and that doctors had to perform open heart surgery, which the parents had tried to avoid, although they knew it was a looming possibility that he would need, if the valvuloplasty did not work out.

“We were told they were going to do a Ross-Konno procedure open heart surgery, where they moved his pulmonary valve into the spot where the aortic valve is and made a new pulmonary valve with a whole new graph,” Alyse Schwartz-Mosca said.

While doctors knew that Ellis’ mitral valve was not healthy, his mother said that they were hoping that the procedure would be enough. However, while recovering from the procedure, three weeks later, things were still not going well for the baby, she said

“He wasn’t eating and gaining weight. So that’s when they replaced his mitral valve. We were so glad to hear his voice. They replaced his mitral valve with the smallest mechanical valve ever, 15 millimeters, about the size of a dime. And here he is now and all of that took place in the first two months of his life,” she said.

“We now know that having this new hybrid OR would have made a procedure like his, if it needed to go to open heart surgery…that they would have been able to keep him in one place and just move around some other people,” she said. “So it sounds like having this new hybrid OR can really, really save a lot of children’s lives without having any time in between.”

Connecticut Children’s COO Bob Duncan said that Ellis is one of an untold number of children who are going to have a chance and a healthier future, due to the work of their expert surgeons and now what can be done in the new hybrid OR.

“Today is an amazing and exciting day in the history of Connecticut Children’s Hospital and in the history of Connecticut,” he said about the facility opening. “But more importantly for children’s health.

“Here at Connecticut Children’s, we always strive to do what’s best for kids. And to do that, we have to think big. And we have to think innovative. And in my … opinion is something we do very well here. This [hybrid OR] room does it all. More importantly, it will make a substantial impact on the lives and the health of children,” he said.

Surgeon-in-Chief Dr. Christine Finck said that having the new hybrid OR means that children should not be treated as little adults, but are in need of specialized care.

“Here at Connecticut Children’s we are going to be able to deliver that care in this special room,” she said. “We’re going to be able to combine state of the art imaging technology with routine procedures such as open surgical procedures or minimally invasive procedures. This is fantastic.

“This means that we can improve precision and the care that we give to children …” she said.

Finck said the two-in-one surgery, supported by advanced real time imaging “is what defines hybrid.

“Hybrid means that you can go from imaging to surgery back to imaging. And what’s going to happen [is] our kids are going to get the best care ever,” she said.