HOUSTON – With a trach, it's just about impossible to start eating and start school, and it increases the risk of infection. That's why one Texas Children's Hospital doctor says it's important to get them out sooner, and he sees babies from across America for this procedure.
In a surgery this month, doctors removed the tracheostomy tube that 2-year-old Harlow Harper had since she was an infant.
"She was born at 23 weeks," mom Christina Harper said. "She had bilateral vocal cord paralysis; basically they were in the closed position so she couldn't pass air."
Christina Harper found a pediatric ear, nose and throat specialist at Texas Children's Hospital, Dr. Deepak Mehta, who goes against the trend of keeping the trach in. He takes a graft from the rib to widen the vocal cords, then removes the trach from toddlers like Harper, and that changes everything!
"Breathing and swallowing goes hand in hand and it becomes important to fix these problems sooner rather than later because it affects their ability to speak, swallow. And as you can see in the case of Harlow, that by fixing her airway, her swallowing has picked up so much that she's swallowing much better," Dr. Mehta said.
"She used to not want to eat anything, not put anything in her mouth, and now we can't keep her out of the kitchen," Christina Harper said.
Plus, Harper said she will be able to start preschool like normal kids.
"She's going to enter the school system at 3 for developmental services and I was more comfortable not sending her to school with a trach. Because that means I need to meet a nurse and train a nurse and have my daughter's life in someone else's hands that I don't know," Harper said.
"It's a huge thing. We take it for granted, but this is a huge thing for these families," Dr. Mehta said.