During her mother Genevieve’s final weeks of pregnancy in 2013, doctors noticed there were issues with Arielle’s heart. Arielle was born with dilated cardiomyopathy and immediately transferred to The Royal Children’s Hospital.
After multiple tests it was revealed that the left side of Arielle’s heart wasn’t functioning, Genevieve and her husband Carl were told to prepare for the worst. At that time, a heart transplant wasn’t an option nor had it ever been performed on a child of Arielle’s age.
At eight days old, it became clear that Arielle wasn’t going to recover and specialists at The Royal Children’s Hospital made a bold decision to fit her with a Berlin Heart, a mechanical cardiac support system that supports children with severe heart failure. A child that young, at just over a week old, had never been fitted with such a device in Australia.
Thanks to this life-saving decision made by the RCH specialists the Berlin Heart supported Arielle and at five-months-old she was lucky enough to receive a heart transplant, making her one of the youngest ever recipients in Australia.
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