New Jersey's Youngest Patient to Undergo Cardiac Ablation: 17-Month Old Boy Treated at Children's Hospital of New Jersey

Earlier this month pediatric cardiologists at Children’s Hospital of New Jersey at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center performed a successful cardiac ablation on a 17-month old child, curing his life-threatening abnormal heart rhythm. It is the first time in New Jersey that this state-of-the-art technique has been applied in a child this young.

“Abnormal heart rhythms are not uncommon in children, occurring in almost 5 percent of children and young adults. Most cases can be managed with medication.

Not for Cole Miller. Cole spent much of his young life in and out of the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit due to his heart’s abnormal rhythm. Born with a congenital heart defect, the scar tissue that resulted from his cardiac reconstructive surgery impacted his heart’s rhythm and further complicated treatment. A variety of medications and combinations of medications were used to manage Cole’s heart rhythm. Even when he was not at the hospital, Cole wore a monitor 24 hours a day through which his heart’s activity was scrutinized.

“We would get calls in the middle of the night alerting us to a dangerous rhythm,” said his mother, Molly. “We gathered him up and he would be back in the hospital again for days, weeks or months.”

The family was left with a choice of two treatments-- implantation of a pacemaker that would regulate his heart beat at a normal, steady pace or an ablation that could potentially cure the rhythm disorder by isolating and destroying the heart cells in which stray electrical impulses were arising.

“It wasn’t a difficult choice,” reflected Ms. Miller. “We wanted Cole to have a life that wasn’t built around medication schedules and hospital admissions. Ablation was a chance to cure the problem and we had great confidence in the Children’s Hospital.”

Ablation is performed only rarely on children as young a Cole. A highly specialized invasive electrophysiology study was performed to isolate the path of his heart’s electrical impulses that cause it to beat. This information was then synchronized with a 3-dimensional image of his heart. Together, they provided a positional map of Cole’s heart, similar to a global positioning system. This state-of-the-art capability and a catheter-based ablation technique were applied to precisely burn very small portions of Cole’s heart that were generating stray electrical impulses.

“Our family could not have hoped for a better ending, said his mother. This is the beginning of a new life for Cole.”

Date: June 25, 2008

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