Toddler Beats Grim Odds in Brain Recovery

The toddler, Superman’s “S” on his shirt, sat among a crowd Monday as if he had never been changed, as if his life and body weren’t forever rearranged by a Jeep Cherokee that ran over his head in a parking lot.

For Cynthia LaRosa, it was a moment of joy, astonishment and even disbelief as her son, 18-month-old Anton, was released from Children’s Hospital of Orange County in Mission Viejo. Somehow, it shouldn’t be like this: A child who was so seriously injured isn’t expected to smile a month later, or cry, or remember his favorite pop-up books, or even be alive, she said.

“I’m amazed God gave me my baby back,” LaRosa, 28, said following a press conference Monday to announce the toddler’s recovery and the success of a new procedure that doctors say helped save Anton’s life.

The Mission Viejo woman said she also was beside herself with the strength of her son, who had faced a 1% chance of living.

“He can move, he can talk, he can remember things. He is the same boy. He will be different, too. But he is my same boy,” LaRosa said. As she spoke, her husband, Brian LaRosa, 29, was nearby, helping Anton sit in the driver’s seat of the very firetruck that responded to the accident.

But just then, Anton cried and cried, and cried more, until the father took him in his arms and softly touched his head, brushing back a wisp of hair fine as Thai silk.

Anton has what look like a few scratches on his head--healing entry points for a new procedure in the United States that allows doctors to use catheters to pump oxygen to patients with brain injuries.

A Surprisingly Basic Treatment

Doctors touted the treatment as surprisingly basic, the sort of procedure that often makes folks step back and wonder what really heals people: On its simplest level, oxygen was Anton’s medicine.

“Without the oxygen directly to his brain, we wouldn’t have known what to do,” said Mary Kay Bader, a neurological clinical nurse, who helped treat the boy.

“It was oxygen to the right place.”

Only recently, however, has the procedure been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The catheters arrived at the hospital only three days before the Feb. 26 accident. Anton’s brain was the first assignment.

The procedure, called Licox, consists of a VCR-size machine that measures oxygen pumped to the brain, allowing doctors to closely monitor patients to better understand what medicines to administer.

Before Licox, catheters were placed in patients’ necks, a process that guided doctors much more generally, and ineffectively.

Despite the availability of the promising new medical technique, doctors said Monday that at the time, they didn’t think Anton would survive.

“On the scale of it, he was on the bottom end,” said William Louden, the brain surgeon at CHOC who treated the boy. Anton had suffered extensive skull injuries and brain damage. The case posed an incredible challenge: “There was no blood clot, for example. There was no clear lesion to go in and fix.”

Youngest in U.S. to Have Procedure

Anton became the youngest patient in the United States to undergo such a procedure. So far it has been used on only a few others, experts said.

Anton will need physical therapy to help develop coordination and other skills affected by the injury, but medical personnel still marvel that his prognosis for recovery is good.

“I don’t know what saved Anton,” said Bader, adding that it might have been God, might have been science, might simply have been coincidence. Who knows? she asked.

A month ago, the LaRosas were walking with Anton in the parking lot of the Mission Viejo Public Library on one of Cynthia LaRosa’s thrice-weekly trips.

The details are still unclear. Somehow Anton fell and was run over by an SUV. The incident has been ruled an accident by police.

As Anton lay there, his parents scrambled to his side, praying for help. About the same time, Roxanne Dean, 41, of Mission Viejo was leaving the library with two books for her son. She hadn’t wanted to be there and had resented running the errand for her 16-year-old son.

Then she saw the blood and the accident. Dean, an off-duty nurse, performed CPR on Anton.

“Ten breaths,” Cynthia LaRosa said. “I’m so thankful for her 10 breaths. I’m so thankful God did something to give me my son back.”

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Medical Breakthrough

Children’s Hospital of Orange County doctors credit a new brain oxygen monitor with saving the life of an 18-month-old boy who suffered a near-fatal skull fracture. How the device works: 1) Implant device into skull

2) Thread probes into damaged area of brain

3) Begin monitoring process

Because the brain is swollen and doctors can’t operate, the device allows hospital staff to monitor the brain’s oxygen, blood and temperature levels.

Source: Linda Littlejohns, Integra Neurosciences

Graphics reporting by BRADY MacDONALD / Los Angeles Times