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DR. SINAI C. ZYBLEWSKI
PEDIATRIC CARDIOLOGIST, MUSC CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL
Dr. Sinai Choi Zyblewski ‘92 learned to juggle at Porter-Gaud. No, not tossing three balls into the air, but the kind of juggling required to be a mother, a wife, and one of the state’s leading pediatric cardiologists. For Sinai, every day is different. She alternates weekly between working in the Medical University of South Carolina’s pediatric cardiac intensive care unit (PCICU) and the Advanced Fetal Care Center. She is a member of a team of five specialists in the 14-bed pediatric cardiac intensive care unit - the only one in the state. Most of her young patients (newborn to adolescent) are waiting for heart surgery or recovering from surgery. Throughout the day, she performs intraoperative echocardiograms before and after surgery, completes her rounds with a team of doctors, nurses, and medical professionals, and cares for her patients after surgery. “Those days are busy,” says Sinai. “They are physically the hardest. I leave home by 6:30 a.m. and I am home after 7:00 p.m. Then, once I’m home, I’m reviewing homework, signing school papers, and picking out canned goods for the food drive.” Sinai and her husband, Sean, also a physician, have two boys. Milo, who is a second-grader at Porter-Gaud, and Max, age 11, who is a sixth-grader at Buist Academy. On the weeks Sinai is not in the PCICU she is performing fetal consults. Heart disorders affect approximately 1 in 100 babies each year. There are many types of congenital heart defects, ranging from those that
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pose relatively small threats to the health of the child to those that require surgery in the newborn period. Disorders can include an abnormally structured heart or large vessels. Such hearts may have incomplete or missing parts, may be put together the wrong way, may have holes between chamber partitions, or may have narrow or leaky valves or vessels. But now many complex heart defects can be diagnosed before birth - in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy. Sinai’s patients come from all over the state. The center provides both inpatient and outpatient diagnostics, treatment, and follow-up services for a full range of pediatric heart disorders. Fetal consults involve reviewing ultrasounds and discussing the diagnosis and prognosis, course of action, and intervention with her patients. These visits take a few hours each and Sinai sees five to six patients a day. They can be intense and overwhelming visits for her patients, but Sinai believes that the earlier the diagnosis and coordinated care plan are delivered, the better the outcome for the newborn. The schedule in the Fetal Care Center weeks allows Sinai to spend mornings with her family. “The weeks I’m doing consults means I can have breakfast with the boys, then take Milo to school. It’s wonderful starting our day together as a family.”