This article tells the story of Jayden Mirville-Beamon, a baby born with a rare and massive tumour that occupied 80% of his chest cavity. Doctors at M Health Fairview Masonic Children's Hospital used cutting-edge virtual reality technology to plan the complex surgery to remove the tumour. The article highlights the innovative approach taken by the medical team and the emotional journey of Jayden's parents.
Jayden Mirville-Beamon’s mother watched her 12-day-old baby’s curious eyes scan the hospital hallway last June as nurses took him toward the operating room. Jayden’s mother Somya Mirville said she believed the baby was communicating to them with those brown eyes, which he had rarely opened. Left untreated, Jayden would’ve died. A tumour had invaded 80% of the baby’s chest, sticking to his largest artery and shifting his heart to the right, preventing his lungs from inflating properly.
Jayden’s cardiology team at M Health Fairview Masonic Children’s Hospital had prepared using a novel virtual reality (VR) technology that would map the tumour and help surgeons plan their approach in advance. A weeks-long process of grief and guilt was building to a conclusion for parents Mirville and Eddie Beamon. “I try not to think the worst or manifest it,” Mirville said in an interview this month. On April 29, Mirville woke up and Jayden wasn’t kicking around in her belly like usual. She continued on, heading to the mall and then the movies, where she reclined and chowed on Milk Duds, sour Skittles and popcorn to try to get him moving. As soon as the film ended, her instincts told her to zoom to the Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC), where she works as a patient service coordinator in the paediatric unit. She spent the night in the hospital, wondering what was wrong with her baby as staff paged cardiologists again and again. The next morning, a doctor made a diagnosis: Jayden had a rare pericardial teratoma – a type of tumour doctors say randomly occurs. Paediatric heart surgeon Dr Murfad Peer said that the tumour rapidly increased in size as delivery approached. Mirville moved to the M Health Fairview hospital to receive care from specialists, but there were no easy answers. An idea was floated: She could fly to the US state of Cincinnati, where doctors had handled a similar case. The doctors also seemed to offer the option of palliative care once the baby was born, because the chances he would die were so high that proceeding with painful life-saving measures at that point was questionable. This broke her heart, she said, but she’d approve it if necessary. She had tried so hard to be healthy during the pregnancy, but she wondered if the complications could be her fault. “I also kind of felt grief,” she said, “because I didn’t really know what was going to happen, and seeing everyone kind of freak out and not have seen it before – it was just a lot.” A 3D-printed model of Jayden’s chest cavity with the giant tumour (the clear part) filling most of it and pushing his heart aside. Jayden’s swelling started going down as doctors drained the fluid trapped around his heart through two procedures before he was even born. The baby got the memo, it seemed – Mirville’s water broke roughly five days after the 32-week mark. After just an hour and a half at the M Health Fairview Children’s Hospital, she went in for a caesarean section. He might immediately need a heart-lung bypass machine to stay alive. “I didn’t think that the baby would even survive the delivery,” he said, “because the tumour was so huge.” Mirville didn’t get to hold him. She watched as doctors attached tubes and wires to the four-pound, 15-ounce (about 2.2kg) newborn. She felt lonely, despite the massive team of doctors buzzing around her trying to figure out what to do. M Health Fairview paediatric cardiologist Dr Shanti Narasimhan said the team included maternal fetal medicine doctors, neonatologists, cardiologists, cardiothoracic surgeons, paediatric surgeons, radiologists and others. Removing the massive tumour would require thoughtful coordination, she said. Ahead of the surgery, Dr Narasimhan tried something she had never attempted: building a VR model of Jayden’s chest. She used a software programme called Elucis, which spliced together CT (computed tomography) scans of the baby to produce a digital clone of his anatomy. On a recent Friday, she demonstrated the technology in an M Health Fairview conference room, strapping on a Meta VR headset. Swinging joysticks around in midair, the doctor could manipulate a virtual bust of Jayden’s organs and tumour hovering in the middle of a dark, 360-degree void. “It’s basically a clone of the patient,” he explained. Mirville said she didn’t receive survivability statistics for the tumour removal before Jayden was wheeled into the operating room. She sat in the waiting room with Beamon for eight hours. Inside the operating room, a staff of at least 10 watched as Dr Peer cut down the middle of Jayden’s chest. He needed to extend the incision to Jayden’s left side because it was so large – roughly larger than a tennis ball
VIRTUAL REALITY MEDICINE SURGERY HEART TUMOUR PEDIATRIC CARDIOLOGY INNOVATION PATIENT STORY
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