An infant born with a damaged heart has helped break barriers in pediatric cardiac care for patients around the world.
In late 2020, The Georgia Claire Bowen Foundation announced a million-dollar grant to the Boston Children’s Hospital Heart Center. The foundation was founded by Kate Bowen, an Averill Park native, Albany Academy of the Holy Names graduate and children’s clothing designer, in honor of her daughter Georgia Claire Bowen. Georgia, now 2 years old, was born in cardiac arrest.
To save her life, doctors moved her from Massachusetts General Hospital, where she was born, to Boston Children’s Hospital. Bowen says the physicians there tried something that had never been done before on any human, especially a newborn, after a heart attack.
"They harvested mitochondrial cells from her muscle and her back and deployed them down for left coronary artery to try to revive her left ventricle. And that procedure was a little bit too late if they incur heart muscle was not really responding to that. Though she then went on an external organ called the Berlin heart, which is a left ventricular assist device, which was a bridge to his heart transplantation, she received a neonatal heart transplant of four months old, the gift of life, he's now two years post-transplant, and the true miracle. With all of that he also sustained a large stroke while she was on life support to the left side of her brain which affects the right side of her body. She also had a bloodstream infection, a fungal infection, a left arterial blood clot, every every possible complication and obstacle was thrown at her. And she defied all odds."
After spending months in the hospital with Georgia and seeing first-hand how ill-fitting hospital gowns for pediatric patients were inconvenient for patients, doctors and nurses, Bowen founded GCB Medical Supply in May and worked as the pandemic closed in to create the Georgie, a kimono-style pediatric onesie that is MRI and X-ray compatible. It is made to accommodate tubes and machines and is now worn by babies in hospitals across the country. Her business boomed, leading to that million dollar grant.
"It launched in September of 2020, we celebrated Georgia’s second year heart transplant. We donated a million dollars to Boston Children's Hospital to Georgia's cardiologist Dr. Christina VanderPluym. She is Georgia’s changemaker. She has been with us since Georgia was brought to Boston Children's without a pulse. And her cardiothoracic surgeon, Dr. Francis Fynn-Thompson. together they're going to innovate and bring change to pediatric heart failure."
The Georgia Claire Bowen IMPACT (Imagining More Possibilities in Advanced Cardiac Therapies) Initiative at Boston Children’s Hospital supports cutting-edge pediatric cardiac research and care. The enterprise collaborates with pediatric heart networks around the world to pave the way for research and data sharing to improve pediatric cardiac care.
Baby Georgia is now at home in Vermont with her parents and three siblings.
GCB Medical Supply also provides personal protective equipment (PPE) to frontline workers who are battling COVID-19.
