Giving and Growing June 2019

Dr. Ashley Bhatt, third from left, UMMC neonatologist, reunites with Savannah Richardson 18 years after the former patient left Batson Children’s Hospital. With them are Richardson’s parents, Jennifer and Bill.
Dr. Ashley Bhatt, third from left, UMMC neonatologist, reunites with Savannah Richardson 18 years after the former patient left Batson Children’s Hospital. With them are Richardson’s parents, Jennifer and Bill.
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Our Patients: Savannah Richardson goes from NICU to pageant winner

Published on Friday, June 21, 2019

By: Annie Oeth, aoeth@umc.edu

The first time Dr. Abhay Bhatt saw Savannah Richardson, the newborn was struggling to breathe with underdeveloped lungs.

Richardson’s changed a little since then.

The 2019 Germantown High School graduate is the reigning Miss Teen Magnolia State and will be an elementary education major at Mississippi State University this fall.

“We owe her survival to the care she received at Batson,” said Jennifer Richardson, Savannah’s mother.

The Richardsons – Bill, Jennifer and Savannah – returned to the state’s only children’s hospital with Bill Richardson’s robotics students from Ridgeland High School.

When the Richardsons learned that Bhatt, a UMMC neonatologist, was still caring for newborns at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit where Savannah had been a patient 18 years before, they knew they had to see him again.

“God brought him back in our path,” Jennifer Richardson said.

Savannah had started life at an area hospital.

“She was having problems breathing and was taken to the NICU,” Richardson said. “They told me this was very normal, that sometimes babies need time to begin breathing better.”

At first, Savannah received oxygen, but she was put on a ventilator to obtain better results.

The next morning, Jennifer and her mother were on their way to see Savannah. “They stopped us at the door and said the doctor wanted to talk with us,” Jennifer said. “I knew that wasn’t going to be good news.”

They were told Savannah would need a higher level of care. An ambulance had been called to take her to the Medical Center’s NICU, the only Level IV NICU in the state – the most acute level of care.

“It scared us to death,” Richardson said. “Dr. Bhatt was the first doctor we saw there. He told us she had pulmonary hypertension.”

Pulmonary hypertension in newborns can cause respiratory distress and can be fatal. 

After nearly two weeks of breathing via a ventilator, Bhatt told Savannah’s family they had two options: surgery in Boston, or trying nitric oxide, which was then experimental for her condition.

“They told us she might not survive the transport and surgery, so we went with the second option,” Richardson said. “It was a miracle.”

Nitric oxide, a naturally occurring vasodilator, improved Savannah’s oxygenation. “Within a week, it was a dramatic difference,” Richardson said.

For Bhatt, seeing his former patient thriving and heading to college was meaningful – as was learning that his nephew, Nagendra Upadhyay, is one of Bill Richardson’s robotics students at Ridgeland High School.

“We are so happy Savannah is doing so well,” Bhatt said, “and it truly is a small world.”