Around 8,000 children are born in this country every year with a heart defect. In one third, the heart defect is so complex and sometimes life-threatening that the children’s heart specialists have to act immediately or shortly after birth. Modern medicine is doing incredible things.
Beep, beep, beep. Till’s heart beats evenly, he sleeps soundly on the treatment table in the heart catheter laboratory. The four-year-old is happily holding the cuddly toy Gustav in his arms. “We could also do the procedure when the children are awake. But that’s pure stress for them, it’s better if they sleep,” says Felix Berger, 62, director of the Clinic for Congenital Heart Defects – Pediatric Cardiology at the German Heart Center of the Charité Berlin. The four-year-old’s slender body lies under green paper towels. Berger will immediately insert the cardiac catheter through the vein in the left groin. There is a hole in the wall separating Till’s atria. The plan is to close it with an umbrella today.