Evelyn Hamm was born with a hole in the middle of her heart. But her parents and her doctors expected it. During her 20-week anatomy scan, doctors detected the congenital heart condition, an atrioventricular septal defect
Modern medicine is changing the prognosis for kids with Down syndrome and heart defects
Evelyn Hamm was born with a hole in the middle of her heart. But her parents and her doctors expected it.
During her 20-week anatomy scan, doctors detected the congenital heart condition, an atrioventricular septal defect. While uncommon, the defect is very common among children born with another condition - Trisomy 21, also known as Down syndrome. So common, in fact, it was the presence of this defect that alerted doctors to Evelyn’s extra chromosome.
“We did not do prenatal genetic testing,” said Rachel Hamm, who was in her late 20s when she became pregnant with Evelyn, her first child. Initially, the news that her baby was facing two serious health conditions “was overwhelming.”
But during the last few months of her pregnancy, Rachel and her team of doctors had two things families of children with Down syndrome did not have decades ago: time to prepare, and a wealth of knowledge about how to treat conditions that once signaled an early death.