Understand what Ebstein’s anomaly is, a rare disease that affects the daughter of actor Juliano Cazarré

Last weekend, actor Juliano Cazarré’s wife, journalist Letícia Cazarré, used her Instagram profile to demonstrate how much she is missing her children and especially Maria Madalena, who turned 2. She and the soap opera artist have five children, but in recent months she has been in the hospital with the youngest, Maria Guilhermina, six months old, who has a rare heart disease: Ebstein’s anomaly.

Heart disease, which affects one in every ten thousand babies, is a disease of the tricuspid valve, one of the four valves of the heart, which is on the right side of the organ.

“The valve forms a little further down [do normal] and that causes failure. The disease has several degrees and they depend on the size of the valve height difference. When it’s very serious, you have to operate right away in the child’s life because, as it’s a valve on the right side, it causes a very big heart failure”, explained Rafael Otto Schneidewind, heart surgeon at Hospital Alemão Oswaldo Cruz.

According to the doctor, in less severe cases of the disease, the patient has a normal life until adulthood, but that the most common Ebstein anomaly is to appear in the severe form and the heart has to be operated on in the first phase of life.

“You can change the valve or do valvuloplasty, which is the reconstruction of the valve. This technique is widespread. The surgeon lifts the part of the valve that is recessed. It is an efficient technique. There is no medicine, nothing that treats the valve other than surgery. When operated, the case of right heart failure is reversed”, said the surgeon.

On her Instagram profile, the mother of little Maria Guilhermina has already reported that the child has already had a catheterization, placed a stent and, more recently, underwent a tracheostomy. She has been with the girl in a hospital in São Paulo since her birth in June.