11 February 2021 - When a baby arrived at Children’s National Hospital with a critically underdeveloped heart, it was clear to her care team that she needed surgery. But they had a dilemma: At less than 6 pounds, she wasn’t strong enough to undergo surgery but probably wouldn’t survive without it.

The solution was a stent, a tube the width of a toothpick. It would be inserted through an artery in her leg, manoeuvred into a key blood vessel near her heart, and then expanded to keep blood flowing through vessel until she was big enough to undergo the open-heart surgery she needed.

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