Archive for cardiac research
COVID-19 vaccination in 12- to 18-year-olds: What does the science say?
With a third “booster” dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine now authorized for children age 12 and older, you may be wondering about the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccination in teens. With months of experience — and recent research — to draw from, we now have more answers. Several recent studies led or co-led by ... Read More
Bringing the Ozaki procedure to the world to repair children’s aortic valves
Children with aortic stenosis or regurgitation often need surgery to reconstruct or replace the aortic valve. However, existing bioprosthetics can fail over time, and mechanical leaflets and valves require lifelong anticoagulant therapy. Christopher Baird, MD, director of the Congenital Heart Valve Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, saw a promising alternative emerge in adult cardiac surgery: aortic ... Read More
New study ties residual lesion score (RLS) to cardiac surgery outcomes
How well a patient does after surgery for congenital heart disease (CHD) depends on a large number of variables, ranging from patient characteristics to preoperative status to anatomic complexity to perioperative factors. One of the most important predictors of adverse events or reintervention is the presence of residual lesions — structural cardiac abnormalities that remain ... Read More
Soft stents, hardened in place by UV light, allow a snug, custom fit
Airway stents are often used when the trachea and bronchi need to be buttressed, as in children and adults with tracheobronchomalacia whose airways become “floppy” and collapse during normal breathing. This condition can occur in conjunction with congenital cardiac anomalies in which the major heart vessels compress the trachea, and with severe, recurrent bronchitis. But ... Read More
New findings show risk of bleeding and clotting after COVID-19
A year after COVID-19 was first identified, we have some answers about how to prevent and treat this illness, but there are still many questions. Some of the unknowns include what longer-term effects COVID-19 infection may have on the heart and other systems in the body. One of the complications associated with COVID-19 infection is ... Read More
The brightest rainbow follows the darkest storm: Our PVS journey
Caroline is our rainbow baby, born after the loss of another child, the light and color arising after a storm passes. A rainbow baby lifts a family in desperate need of lifting. It is a beautiful thing that I hope you never experience. Caroline was born on Dec. 10, 2015. Just three months later, my ... Read More
Two new approaches to identifying conduction tissue
Conduction cells in the heart are responsible for initiating contraction of the heart muscle. The inability to properly identify the location of conduction tissue in patients with congenital heart defects during heart surgery can lead to post-operative conduction abnormalities such as heart block or conduction delays. This necessitates the need for pacemakers, which leads to ... Read More
Coordinated care and research for genetic cardiovascular disorders
Genetic cardiovascular disease in children sometimes comes to light in a crisis — a sudden collapse, sudden breathing difficulty, a sudden death in the family. Or it may be part of a diverse collection of symptoms, mostly having nothing to do with the heart. Sometimes it is picked up incidentally. “From an incidental ECG finding ... Read More
MIS-C: The tip of an iceberg? Looking at cardiac care for this rare syndrome
In the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak, it seemed that children were far less likely to develop serious problems from the disease than adults. Then in mid-March, hospitals started reporting an unusual inflammatory syndrome in children that seemed to be related to COVID-19, now known as multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C). MIS-C can ... Read More
Gene therapy reverses heart failure in mouse model of Barth syndrome
Barth syndrome is a rare metabolic disease caused by mutation of a gene called tafazzin or TAZ. It can cause life-threatening heart failure and also weakens the skeletal muscles, undercuts the immune response, and impairs overall growth. Because Barth syndrome is X-linked, it almost always occurs in boys. There is no cure or specific treatment. ... Read More