Nine-year-old Tong Tong, who is in the fourth grade, had to face suspension from school because of a serious heart condition that made her excel in her studies.

In November 2023, the child suddenly said, 'Mom, I have chest pains,' and the pain continued for about an hour,” said the child's mother. That's when I wondered if it could be the same as her dad. Her father was 30 years old when all of a sudden he had chest pains to the point where he couldn't stand up, and it was about five months between the onset and his death.”

Thinking that her deceased husband also suffered from heart disease, Tong Tong's mother felt scared at once and hurriedly took Tong Tong to the emergency department of the county hospital. The results showed that the child suffered from hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy, abnormal thickening of the heart muscle, the thickness of the heart muscle even reached more than three times the age of the same person, seriously blocking the flow of blood from the heart. Not to worry about the sadness, anxious mother took the child to the provincial hospital, and finally confirmed that the child is indeed inherited from his father's hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy.

For hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy, the traditional treatment is to carry out difficult open-heart surgery, the surgery is very traumatic, especially for children such as Tong Tong, the heart volume is only two-thirds of an adult's, the aorta of the heart is thin, the open-heart surgery is even more difficult and risk is much higher.

The provincial hospital recommended that Tong Tong's mother go to Tongji Hospital of Huazhong University of Science and Technology Tongji Medical College in Wuhan, and said, “In the past two years, a new technology has been developed, rotary cutting technology, not normal open heart surgery.” As if grasping a straw, mother and daughter rushed to Tongji Hospital, where doctors brought them good news.

Wei Xiang, chief physician of cardiac macrovascular surgery at Tongji Hospital, said, “Previously, the incision was made in the middle of the chest, and this incision was very difficult to see for the little girl, and then we now only need to make an axillary lateral chest of about 4 centimeters of the incision to complete the surgery, and the psychological impact on the child is also smaller.”

Although this minimally invasive procedure is less invasive, there is a lot to worry about for surgeons whose surgical experience is mostly with adult patients, when they have to operate on a child who is only 9 years old. Would the child's body be able to withstand such an operation? The medical staff gave the child a comprehensive examination, through the analysis of the results of the examination, doctors believe that the child's situation is very dangerous, should be carried out as soon as possible hypertrophic myocardial resection surgery.

In addition to this, Prof. Wei Xiang also said, “The child has special difficulties, the first is that her heart is relatively speaking smaller, when our instruments go in it will be more difficult than adults, more likely to form arrhythmia.” In order to ensure the safety of the surgery, the team of doctors conducted a pre-operative multidisciplinary consultation and formulated a detailed surgical program and emergency plan.

Faced with such a chance to be able to restore her health, Child was very brave. Although she was scared, she was willing to cooperate with the doctors in the examination and surgery, and she wanted to try her best to hang on with her mom to welcome a new life and see a new future. So how difficult is the new minimally invasive heart surgery that Tong Tong is about to undergo? Will it be able to turn this 9-year-old patient's life around and give her a new one?

In the operating room, an ordeal that would change the fate of the child was about to begin. The first thing the medical staff did was to put an indwelling needle in the child's hand. Under the doctor's reassurance, the child's emotions gradually calmed down, the indwelling needle smoothly built up the intravenous channel, and the child began general anesthesia. Once the surgery began, the first few steps went smoothly, but when it came to the crucial step of inserting the myocardial rotary dissection device, the surgery ran into difficulties. A child's heart is much smaller than an adult's, and because the heart chambers are narrower due to myocardial hypertrophy, it is very difficult for the surgical instruments to enter, and they can easily touch the surrounding tissues and cause cardiac arrhythmia. However, under the precise guidance of ultrasound, the team of doctors quickly found a breakthrough with their extensive experience.

Surgery is underway, the doctors are concentrating, and constantly complete each step of the operation, and at this time waiting outside the operating room of the child's mother, has been anxious. When the operation came to an end, just when the doctors thought the operation would be completed successfully, a shocking scene happened. The child's sudden arrhythmia made the atmosphere in the operating room immediately tense. Dr. Wei Xiang immediately rubbed his hand on the child's heart to help the heart beat again, and at the same time commanded the team to start the emergency plan. The temporary pacemaker drove the heart to beat, and the child's heart soon returned to normal sinus rhythm. After intense resuscitation, the child's heart finally resumed beating on its own, and turned to safety.

On the 7th day after the operation, all the checkups of the child were normal. And the recovery is better than expected, after a week of recovery treatment, looking forward to discharge, she can already draw freely in the ward.

Hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy is a congenital heart disease that affects about 2 million people nationwide, but fewer than 1,000 patients undergo surgery each year, and it is the leading cause of sudden death among teenagers and athletes.

“There are too few doctors who can do the surgery, and not many patients are willing to have open-heart surgery.” Traditional surgery needs to saw in the sternum about 20 centimeters, in cardiac arrest, extracorporeal circulation under the operation, traumatic, difficult, limited surgical field of vision, risky and slow recovery, most of the patients heard deterred, choose to take drugs for conservative treatment, but the drugs can only temporarily relieve the symptoms, can not be resolved at the root of the “obstruction”.

“Can we follow the principle of pineapple peeling, make a surgical instrument with rotary cutting function, change the path from the aorta of the heart after opening the chest, from the tip of the heart into the heart, remove the thickened myocardial tissue, and bring out?”

After 6 years of trial production, our team through experimentation, improvement, research and development of 7 principle prototype iterations, formed the final version of the finalized prototype, and based on this original myocardial rotary cutting technology, access to nearly 20 patents, including the national invention patent and U.S. invention patent. This bold idea finally came true.

“In the field of surgery for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, before, we ran after the world, and now, we are running alongside or even leading them.”