New advancements in medical technology — and new uses for existing devices already — are constantly being discovered.

In the field of pediatric cardiology, one of those new uses was just successfully attempted in Tampa.

Piper Small just celebrated her fourth birthday.

“A Wonder Woman Birthday!” she said.

The little superhero can do just about anything, but that wasn't always the case. You'd never know it by looking at her, but Piper was born with a hole in her heart.

Dr. Jeremy Ringewald, the Medical Director of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory at St. Joseph’s Children’s Hospital, has known Piper all her life.

“I was actually the first doctor to see Piper after she was born and told her folks she had this hole,” he said.

Cardiac holes like Piper's are pretty common, but by the time she was three, it wasn’t closing by itself — and her heart was getting bigger.

Traditionally, that would have meant major surgery, but Dr. Ringewald had a different idea. Rather than putting Piper under the knife, he told her parents he could repair her heart right in the Cath Lab — with a device called an Amplatzer.

“It’s like a weight just came off my shoulders. I thought the morning of the procedure that I was going to be a hot mess, crying. But as soon as they took her back, it was almost like a sense of relief,” Piper’s mother, Brooke Small, said.

The device has been used for years to close abnormal blood vessels, but now it has been adapted to a close cardiac holes in much younger patients.

“Piper was the smallest and the youngest that we’ve tried to do this on thus far,” Dr. Ringewald said.

A small tube was inserted into an artery in Piper’s leg, guiding the device to her heart.

“I couldn’t imagine how I’d have felt knowing our little girl was laying on a table with her chest wide open,” said Piper’s father, Kyle Small.

This procedure saved piper from a very long recovery and permanent scars. She went home the next day.

“She’s doing swim lessons, currently. She started T-ball yesterday, doing soccer. So she stays pretty active, and we’re happy about that,” Brooke said.

“I couldn’t have been any more thankful or blessed to have them with us through the entire procedure,” said Kyle.