New technology helps children with heart defects

NEW ORLEANS - There used to be a time when being born with a heart defect meant a shortened life. But now medical science has changed all that.

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And in a few months, local doctors will take a giant leap that puts them on the cutting edge of technology when it comes to fixing hearts.

Tulane doctors are touching the heart of a child who, like many others, was born with a defect.?A team of 12 health care experts,?a well coordinated team under the direction of Dr. Thomas Yeh, go to work on this particular morning to repair where nature failed.

There are surgeons,?nurses, doctors in training,?a team to monitor the brain and kidneys, the?anesthesiologist and another team to work the bypass machine that is acting as the young child's heart and lungs,?while they are cooled and temporarily shut down so the repair can be done.?

To the parents it feels like a miracle. To the?O.R. team, it is what they are trained to do in a day's work. This procedure will allow the child to lead a normal life.

And repairing heart birth defects is the reason why?Tulane University Hospital for Children is preparing to open a state-of-the-art hybrid suite.

"The hybrid suite it's being built to do both interventional cardiology and surgery in one room so that the surgeon and cardiologist can work together doing a procedure to repair a heart," explained Dr.?Michael Recto, a pediatric interventional cardiologist and professor and chief of Pediatric Cardiology at Tulane.

What that means is sometimes an interventional cardiologist can repair the heart in a?cath lab, threading a catheter up the vessel in the groin or leg area, all the way up to the heart to fix it with a special plug.

But other times that is not enough, so the thoracic surgeon needs to open the chest to fix the defect. Now in the hybrid suite the?two types of procedures will be highly coordinated.

"We now know that by working together and being able to bring the best of both worlds together, that we are actually able to improve patient outcomes and do procedures that were not possible a few years ago," said Recto.?

The construction must be highly coordinated too.?The entire space must be reinforced with lead so x-rays won't penetrate. $2 million?worth of state-of-the-art digital equipment will allow all the doctors, and even the parents if they so choose, to see a procedure on monitors.

"The other benefit really will be for teaching when we have residents, medical students, other doctors, they will be able to view exactly what we are looking at from the viewing area right next door," said Recto.?

And doctors will be able to switch from the less invasive procedure, to the major surgery instantly if they need to without having to break scrub in their sterile environment.

"A child will only need to be put to sleep once, okay, you won't have to stop the procedure and say come back in a week.? Procedure will be done in one sitting," Recto explains. "I think if you're just able to save one life and make it easier for one child, that will be certainly worth the cost of everything that's been put into it."

The hybrid heart center at Tulane is one of only several like it in the U.S. It is scheduled to open around the end of the year,?attracting new doctors and creating jobs.