When Aurora Ernzen was just 5 days old, doctors performed surgery to insert a pacemaker in her chest.
The device was new, permitted through emergency use guidelines from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. About the size of a triple-A battery, Aurora’s pacemaker is much smaller than previous devices and more suitable for small babies.
Few children have had the opportunity to receive this tiny pacemaker, but Aurora, born in March, was the second South Texas child at Driscoll Children’s Hospital in Corpus Christi to receive the device.
Aurora’s early, emergency arrival
A couple years earlier, Aurora’s parents, Nicole and Brandon Ernzen, remember learning about Driscoll Children Hospital’s cardiac intensive care unit and heart center at a fundraiser. They had no idea that they’d soon have a child spending her first days of life at the heart center, while Nicole recovered from an emergency C-section across town…