A HARROWING RESCUE FROM A CARIBBEAN ISLAND AND A DASH
TO JACKSON’S HOLTZ CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL SAVES THE LIVES OF PREMATURE TWINS

Evan and Angela Lazarus, parents of Sydney and Serena Lazarus; Eduardo Bancalari, M.D., UM/Holtz director of the division of neonatology; Teresa Del Moral, M.D., UM/Holtz neonatologist; Ilene Sosenko, M.D., UM/Holtz neonatologist; Samuel Ruiz, R.N., B.S.N., Pediatric Transport Team Coordinator

In early April, Evan and Angela Lazarus and their 4-year-old son traveled to Anguilla for the destination wedding of a close friend. Angela was nearly 27 weeks pregnant with twins. However, her doctors in New Jersey gave her the thumbs-up to travel.
 
But late one night Angela began experiencing excruciating pain. Her membranes had ruptured and she was in preterm labor. Angela was rushed by ambulance to a Princess Alexandra Hospital on the eastern Caribbean island. Doctors and nurses there were forced to deliver the babies. Sydney and Serena were born at 2:30 a.m., April 8, each weighing about 2 pounds.
 
But the tiny girls’ lungs were not fully developed. They needed advanced medical care in order to survive. It was critical care that the island facility was not equipped to provide. Princess Alexandra Hospital did not even have air conditioning. Nurses resorted to placing the babies on a table, side by side, under a heat lamp and bagging them with oxygen. They pumped it manually by hand for more than 12 hours.
 
The Lazarus’ were told that the only way their babies would live is if they were flown to a hospital with a neonatal intensive care unit. Their options:  Puerto Rico, Guadalupe or Miami.
 
A graduate of the University of Miami, Evan was familiar with the quality care provided at Jackson Health System and wanted his daughters transferred to Jackson’s Holtz Children’s Hospital, home to one of the largest NICUs in the United States.
 
After more than 10 stressful hours of making arrangements, Evan and Angela were relieved to learn that the trip was approved by their insurance carrier and the government of Anguilla. Holtz’s Pediatric Transport Team used two plans to rush to the island. Each plane was equipped with a state-of-the-art critical care unit capable of providing a continuity of care en route for critically ill children.
 
The team of Holtz neonatologists, nurses and respiratory therapists picked up the newborn girls at the clinic, intubated them, placed them in incubators and prepared them for the three-hour flight to Miami.
 
By midnight – nearly 22 hours after they were born – Sydney and Serena arrived in the Holtz NICU. Since then, they have been cared for around-the-clock by Holtz’s medical team.
 
On June 5, the girls – who are doing well and now weigh nearly 5 pounds each – will leave Holtz with the hospital’s Pediatric Transport Team and travel to Virtua Hospital, near their home in Marlton, NJ. They will likely be out of the hospital in a few weeks.

June

04, 2013, 1:30 p.m.- 2:30 p.m.

Jackson Memorial Hospital 
Clark Diagnostic Treatment Center, room 254
Corner of Northwest 12th Avenue and 19th Street
Miami, FL 33136

Media can park in front of the DTC. Pool television crew and print team will video/photograph the babies in the NICU.