You refer your patients to specialists and hospitals that will take superior care of them and give them the best chances at positive outcomes. As the following success stories demonstrate, the Medical City Children’s Hospital commitment to patient care helps us meet the needs both of patients and their families. Our work also reinforces your patients’ trust in the advice and care that you provide.

One Incredible Day
When Wendy gave birth to her third child, Andrew, she expected a normal delivery by Cesarean section at Medical City. But ten hours after Andrew was born, he had severe difficulty breathing.

An EKG revealed that Andrew suffered from the congenital heart defect TAPVR (total anomalous pulmonary venous return). Because the pulmonary veins were not properly connected to the left atrium, oxygen wasn’t distributed properly throughout Andrew’s body, troubling his breathing and giving him cyanosis.

Wendy is grateful that she decided to deliver Andrew at Medical City, just as she did with his two older siblings, because Andrew didn’t have to survive an emergency flight to Medical City Children’s Hospital from another facility. Medical City remains the only hospital in the Dallas-Fort Worth area with the specialists and technology available to handle all the routine and critical medical needs of both moms and newborns.

Pediatric congenital heart surgeon Dr. Eric Mendeloff and his team were able to immediately begin a surgery that lasted three and a half hours. During the surgery, Dr. Mendeloff skillfully rewired Andrew’s tiny pulmonary veins to allow blood to travel through his heart properly.
Only days after the delicate procedure, the only evidence of Andrew’s ordeal was a razor-thin incision on his chest. Today, he’s as healthy and as active as any other child.

“I couldn’t ask for better nurses.”
When Cameron came to Medical City Children’s Hospital, he had very aggressive acute myeloblastic leukemia, but today he’s cancer free and living an ordinary boy’s life. It wasn’t easy to get to this great result, though. Cameron’s type of blood cancer is very difficult to treat and, in fact, the first type of chemotherapy he was given didn’t force his cancer into remission.

Dr. Carl Lenarsky, Director of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology, explains the next stage in treatment: “We proceeded with very aggressive chemotherapy to get him into remission. The only way to save his life was with a stem cell transplant, but he had no one in his family who could donate. So we searched the world and found an unrelated cord blood match.”

Even after the transplant, Cameron was not out of the woods. He developed septic shock and had to spend three days in the pediatric intensive care unit. Dr. Lenarsky says, “It required a very sophisticated, hands-on level of care to get him through this very complex treatment.” Cameron’s mom, Sandy, remembers being impressed during this time with how well Dr. Lenarsky and his team worked with the ICU staff. She says, “The doctors definitely talk to each other. Everybody knew what everybody else was doing.”

Sandy’s not just a mom—she’s a nurse herself, so she provides a valuable perspective on the care that Cameron received. “The nurses were excellent,” she says. “I couldn't ask for better nurses. They gave me room to do what I needed to do to make me feel like I was still caring for Cameron. And yet they also did what they needed to do to care for him.”

Dr. Lenarsky offers the story’s happy ending. Four years after his transplant, Cameron “has no signs of disease and now he's a normal little boy back in school. I think that one patient summarizes my feelings about Medical City Children's Hospital: We have been able to deliver excellent care in a loving and compassionate environment. But we can also give a level of sophisticated care that is not always available in every institution.”

“The only place we trust.”
When she was five years old, Sarah came to Medical City Children’s Hospital with a fever of unknown origin. Within six hours of being hospitalized, our specialists had diagnosed the problem: selective immunoglobulin A (IgA) deficiency. Sarah’s body can’t properly control its temperature, she’s allergic to fire ants, and she had mild asthma.

In the short term, that meant that she had to undergo emergency sinus surgery. Dr. Timothy Trone, a pediatric otolaryngologist, successfully performed the surgery.

Subsequently, Sarah was cared for by pediatric allergist and immunologist Dr. Robert Sugerman. For a year and a half, she received injections of IVIG (intravenous immunoglobulin) to help prevent future infections.

Peggy, Sarah’s mom, says that although Sarah “still gets sick from time to time, it is easier to deal with when you have such a great team at Medical City Children’s Hospital to work with. From the time we brought her in to Medical City Children’s Hospital and to Dr. Sugerman to now, her quality of life has improved dramatically. You no longer look at her and can tell that she is sick. She looks like a typical healthy kid, and she acts like one. Since she is older and is learning her limitations, she is really able to have a normal life and realizes that there are very few things she can’t do.”

When asked why she chose Medical City Children’s Hospital for Sarah’s care, Peggy says, “All of her specialists were there. I have taken both of my kids to other area hospitals and just am not satisfied with their care in the ER. I feel that I get quality care at Medical City Children’s Hospital and feel confident that they will do all they can for our children.”

Peggy says that one thing Medical City Children’s Hospital does especially well is listen to her. She concludes, “Medical City Children’s Hospital is the only place we trust to care for our children. We only have two, and they are our world. We feel confident that Medical City Children’s Hospital has done their very best for our children and will continue to do so. In the worst possible time of my daughter’s life, we trusted them and never regretted it.”