Hear My Heart: A Battle Scar
“If it were not for the team of doctors in Omaha back in 1970, I would not be alive today,” shares Lori Matthews, a childcare provider in Minneapolis. Matthews is half of the dynamic duo behind a childcare business that has helped raise over a hundred children in South Minneapolis. She was also born with a congenital heart defect, survived open-heart surgery, and today is a donor to One Heart Health.
Matthews’ heart story helps highlight the importance of the One Heart solution. Matthews’ mother, Cheryl Bengtson, recently corresponded with her daughter regarding her 1968 heart screening. Bengtson wrote, “[We] knew you were not thriving and your energy was low. Thank God for an astute and caring family physician, Dr. Wilcox. He heard faint heart sounds that were not right when you were three [years old].”
Matthews’ doctor likely used a stethoscope to listen to her heart in 1968. Stethoscopes are not only an essential medical tool but are portable, nearly universally available, and relatively inexpensive. Most doctors learn how to use a stethoscope in medical school, a technique called auscultation. Even today, auscultation, when used by a trained ear, is a very effective way to screen for concerning heart sounds and refer potential cardiac patients for additional care, as Wilcox did with Matthews.
Matthews’ mother continued, “We had to wait until you reached 40 lbs before you could have the surgery. You grew inches and inches after [the surgery]. Yours was one of the first, if not the very first, open-heart surgery in Omaha.”
In some ways, Matthews’ story is relatively common. She was born with a congenital heart defect (CHD), the most common of birth defects. Each year one in 100 babies born will have a CHD. Yet Matthews’ story is also quite exceptional. She was one of the lucky ones. She was born in the right place and at the right time. She was cared for by a thoughtful and thorough frontline health worker who screened her heart and sent her to the right cardiac specialists to save her life.
Unfortunately, unlike Matthews, most of the world’s children lack access to skilled screening and pediatric cardiac care. It is estimated that only one in ten children with a CHD, globally, will receive the cardiac care they need. In fact, many children in underserved areas of the world are unaware that they even have a heart defect, having never been screened. One Heart Health is working to correct that.
One Heart Health’s co-founders looked to auscultation to overcome this barrier to cardiac care and enable more heart screenings for more kids, regardless of where they live. The inventors noticed that children with advanced complications due to delayed cardiac care for their CHDs were common in places like China. They noticed that the medical professionals working in under-served areas were often stretched and lacked trained ears to identify worrisome heart murmurs with available stethoscopes. But they also noted that introducing more bulky, expensive, and complicated diagnostic equipment, such as echocardiograms and ultrasounds, was equally unsustainable. Not only is the technology expensive and complicated to use but, if it breaks, there is rarely someone available to fix it.
The One Heart app on the other hand is a relatively simple solution, to a complex problem. The app, when coupled with a digital stethoscope, is able to capture heart sounds on a smart phone and send them, in bulk, to a cardiac expert who is trained in auscultation. The cardiologist then informs the frontline worker using the app if a potential cardiac patient needs additional care. One Heart Health even has future plans to add artificial intelligence to the app which will offer the frontline health worker an immediate screening result based upon the heart sounds uploaded. Best of all, if the smartphone fails, nearly every person knows someone who can help them fix or replace their phone.
Today, over 24,000 children in rural China have received heart screenings as a result of the One Heart Health, resulting in life-saving care for children who would have been undetected otherwise. Matthews is supportive of expanding the One Health solution further: “The opportunity to be screened for CHDs should be made available to every person and I will continue to support One Heart Health in their mission to do so in any way I can.”
Hear My Heart is an effort to hear the stories of those individuals and families affected by congenital heart defects (CHDs) and the value of cardiac screenings. One Heart Health believes that every child with heart disease should get a chance at a healthy life. Yet around the world 90% of kids with CHDs do not receive the treatment they need, often because they are never screened.
One Heart Health’s innovative phone app, when coupled with a digital stethoscope, is a portable and inexpensive way to enable heart screenings for kids in remote or under-resourced areas. Over 24,000 children have already received heart screenings as a result of One Heart Health, resulting in lives saved. Donations like Lori’s go to ensure more kids receive life-saving screenings.
Please consider a donation to One Heart Health to expand its services to more kids around the world. Donate today.
If you would like to share your family’s CHD story and why heart screenings are important to you, write us at give@onehearthealth.org.
