February is Heart Month: Gaithersburg Child's Story

The Lasbury family of Gaithersburg learned at their 18-week pre-natal visit that their baby girl, Chase, had a heart defect. Congenital heart disease is the most common birth defect, affecting 8 out of every 1,000 newborns .

Chase’s diagnosis was confirmed as an Atrioventricular (AV) canal defect by Dr. Mary Donofrio, a fetal cardiologist at Children’s National Health System. An AV canal defect means there was a hole between Chase’s heart chambers and problems with the valves that regulate blood flow in the heart.

Chase was born at 29-weeks and weighed just 1 pound, 9 ounces. Dr. Jeffrey Becker, a cardiologist at Children’s National, began caring for Chase at birth. She spent three months in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit before being transferred to Children’s National to have her first surgery to repair her heart, which only had 3 chambers instead of 4.

She has had four major heart surgeries and has been hospitalized a number of times for arrhythmia problems that were finally solved last February with a pacemaker. Now, her parents say she’s a happy, active three-year-old.

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