Routine sports physical leads to life-saving heart surgery for high school athlete

Sports physicals are an annual routine for 16-year-old football player Brennen Fetting. He didn’t expect anything out of the ordinary at his most recent exam in August.

But his primary care physician discovered a heart murmur during the appointment.

She immediately put Brennen in touch with a cardiologist. One week later, he was in surgery.

In the end, a life-saving procedure at the Heart Center at M Health Fairview Masonic Children’s Hospital removed a tennis ball-sized tumor from his heart. Doctors diagnosed it as myxoma – a type of tumor that is incredibly rare, especially in children and teenagers. While myxoma isn’t cancerous, it’s still dangerous if untreated.

Brennen’s tumor had grown to fill his entire left atrium – the upper left chamber of the heart. If it had moved to block the mitral valve, where blood flows out of the left atrium, it could have been deadly.

Thanks to a routine physical and dedicated care team, Brennen’s outcome was much different.

A routine physical saves Brennen’s life

“It goes to show the importance of routine physicals,” said Angie Fetting, Brennen’s mother. “When we went to see the cardiologist, they were joking around – they said they’d hurry up and get Brennen back to playing football. They did an echocardiogram and that’s when they found the heart tumor.”

Brennen didn’t show any symptoms other than the heart murmur. His energy level was normal in the months leading up to his diagnosis. M Health Fairview Cardiac Surgeon Sameh M. Said, MD, FACS, who removed the tumor, said conditions like myxoma can be very hard to detect in young, active people.

“Brennen’s story outlines the importance of something as simple as a sports examination,” he said, echoing Angie. “Heart murmurs are easy to miss. Young, active patients can look like they’re in very good shape from the outside. When we did the operation, it was shocking to think how Brennen was still able to be active with this mass inside his heart.”

Although myxoma isn’t cancerous, Said added that it is still incredibly dangerous. Brennen’s tumor was over three inches in diameter. It could have easily grown or shifted to block blood flow in his heart.

Less invasive procedure, quicker return to “normal”

In the end, Said was able to remove the tumor without opening Brennen’s sternum. Typically, open-heart surgeries go through the chest. Said was able to go in through a much smaller incision under Brennen’s right armpit. This didn’t require going through as much muscle and bone to access the heart.

For a young athlete like Brennen, this means a quicker recovery and less scarring. This innovative approach, called a vertical axillary thoracotomy, helps young patients look and feel normal after surgery. This approach is limited to very few centers across the nation.

Brennen left the hospital only two days after surgery. While he stayed off the field this football season, he was able to return to the bleachers only a couple weeks later – cheering on his teammates from the sidelines. After learning about the tumor, Brennen was disappointed to miss the season, especially because it was his older brother’s last year with the team.

“We’ve been playing football together our whole lives,” said Brennen. “It was really emotional for me to be back at the games, watching all of my teammates in person. Even the day after surgery, I wasn’t in pain. Two weeks later, I felt almost completely back to normal.”