Jennifer Lobaugh is a teenaged girl who has great rhythm. She loves to play the violin. Little did she know that it was the rhythm of her heart that would suddenly beat out of time, giving her quite a scare.

“I was laying down trying to get to sleep and all of the sudden my heart started going really, really fast,” said Lobaugh. “And I tried to just, you know, take deep breaths to try to get it to slow down, but it wouldn’t slow down. I started kind of freaking out.”

At first, Jennifer’s parents weren’t overly concerned. After all, their daughter was a healthy, active teenager. “We didn’t take it that seriously, not at first,” explained Jennifer’s father Stacey Lobaugh. “She was 14 years old and had never had any problems that we knew of before, until that first instance.”

But pediatric heart specialists at the Children’s Hospital at OU MEDICAL CENTER stress that teenagers and younger children are not immune from heart problems. “Some children are born with congenital heart defects,” said pediatric cardiologist Kent Ward, M.D. of OU Children’s Physicians. “Some childhood illnesses can also cause heart problems.” He added parents need to be aware of the sometimes-subtle warning signs.

“The interesting thing is, it doesn’t have to be children who are blue or have blue lips or are totally out of breath," said Christopher Knott-Craig, MD, a pediatric heart sugeron with OU Children’s Physicians. “It can be simple things like children that are tiring out more easily than before. Children who were able to play a game of basketball before but now get winded real easily.”

Ward added other warning signs that may point to heart trouble in teens or children include chest pain that occurs with exertion or exercise (not at rest), shortness of breath or exercise intolerance. If your child is dizzy or light-headed and there is no explainable cause like dehydration or a missed meal, that can also be a warning sign of potential trouble.

The good news is there are more medical therapies, surgical and non-surgical procedures available than ever before to help children diagnosed with heart problems. Dr. Knott-Craig stressed early diagnosis is important because it can lead to changes that can help prevent minor heart problems from becoming major one.

“The heart may have minor defects in it, much the same what that a car can have minor defects,” he explained. “Everybody knows that you can drive a car even with those minor defects, especially if you remember to keep up the routine maintenance, to have your oil changed on a regular basis and your tires checked, balanced and rotated. That way you pick up on little problems before they become big ones and reduce the risk that something will go very wrong. It is very much the same with adolescents who have slightly damaged heart valves, slight damage to the heart muscle itself or a heart that’s working harder than it should. If one is able to detect those little changes at an early stage, one can introduce changes in lifestyle, changes in diet, even medications that may stop the deterioration or prevent it from getting any worse.”

Jennifer was diagnosed with Wolff Parkinson White syndrome, an abnormality in the heart that can cause potentially fatal arrhythmias. The diagnosis led to a referred to Dr. Warren Jackman and the OU Cardiac Arrhythmia Institute for a procedure known as radio-frequency catheter ablation. In the procedure, Jackman and his team located and then destroyed the microscopic strand of heart muscle tissue responsible for the errant rhythm. For Jennifer, it meant a whole new start.

“It’s been near miraculous,” said Jennifer’s father. “My wife and I were very concerned every time she left the house after she had been diagnosed with Wolff Parkinson White Syndrome. After the procedure was done, it’s just like she can do anything she wants.”