A Beautiful Ending for Infant With Bad Heart : Health: Jose Verdugo becomes the youngest person to receive a cardiac defibrillator implant. He is expected to lead a normal life.

Eleven-month-old Jose Verdugo may never have a normal heart, but he should be able to grow up much like other children, thanks to a high-tech device implanted in his upper abdomen by surgeons at Children’s Hospital of Orange County last week.

Dr. Mel Singer, director of the hospital’s cardiac division, said the Downey boy, who was discharged Wednesday, is the youngest patient ever to receive an automatic implantable cardiac defibrillator. Before Jose, the youngest person to receive the cardiac defibrillator was 18 months old, Singer said.

“It’s a happy ending,” said Dr. Sana Al-Jundi, a physician in the hospital’s intensive-care unit. “It’s been a pretty rocky course for him.”

Jose suffers from life-threatening cardiac arrhythmia, a condition that is relatively rare in infants. When an irregular heartbeat occurs, Jose’s heart stops functioning and blood is not pumped through his body. The boy quickly lapses into unconsciousness.

The implanted device, which is about the size of a cigarette pack, monitors the boy’s heartbeat and administers a jolt of electricity when his heart needs to be shocked back into a regular rhythm. Without the device, Jose would be in constant danger of going into cardiac arrest, Singer said.

The first sign of trouble for Jose came when he was only 40 days old. The infant suddenly lost consciousness for three minutes but was kept alive by his father, Ralph Verdugo, who administered cardiopulmonary resuscitation until paramedics arrived. Ralph Verdugo is a mechanic who was taught CPR at work.

“He truly owes his life to his father,” Singer said.

After a one-month stay at Children’s Hospital, during which the arrhythmia was diagnosed, Jose seemed to have regained his health and was able to return home under medication. But eight months later, the arrhythmia recurred. Once again, Ralph Verdugo saved his young son’s life with CPR.

Doctors then decided that Jose needed the implanted defibrillator to survive. The four-hour surgery performed Friday was a relatively routine procedure, except for the patient’s young age, Singer said. The device is normally implanted into older adults who have suffered heart attacks.

Although Jose must return to the hospital for periodic examinations and to have the device’s batteries changed every two years or so, he should be able to develop normally, Singer said. The doctor stopped short of giving Jose permission to take up contact sports, however.

The experience has also been pretty rough for Jose’s mother, Aida Sarkar, who is six months pregnant. The stress of the past five days caused her to go into contractions, she said.

Sarkar seemed relieved Wednesday as she gently rocked Jose, who was wearing a Chicago White Sox playsuit in the hospital’s pediatric intensive-care unit. After she delivers her second child, a baby girl who will be named Stephanie, Sarkar said, there will be no more children.

“No more babies,” she said with a smile. “It’s just too much.