{"72535":{"#nid":"72535","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Technology Predicts Outcome of Child Heart Surgery","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EGeorgia Tech and Emory University researchers have developed an innovative new technology that will help pediatric cardiac surgeons design and test a customized surgical procedure before they ever pick up a scalpel. With a better understanding of each child\u0027s unique heart defect, surgeons could greatly improve the likelihood that children with complex defects requiring multiple surgeries over a period of several years could have smoother recoveries and an improved quality of life after their operations.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EThe technology, known as image-based surgical planning and developed with the help of pediatric cardiologists and pediatric surgeons at The Children\u0027s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), Emory University and Children\u0027s Healthcare of Atlanta, creates a three-dimensional model of the child\u0027s heart with data from the child\u0027s MRI scans at different times in the cardiac cycle, also called a 4-D MRI. The models allow surgeons to visualize the direction of blood flow and determine any energy loss in the heart. So if a surgeon were planning a certain correction to an area of a child\u0027s heart, a model created by the system would show the surgeon how well blood would flow through the newly configured heart.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EThe goal of the Georgia Tech\/Emory project is to create a complete system that allows surgeons to get a detailed look at the child\u0027s heart functions with the new MRI system, design surgical procedures for optimum post-operative performance and evaluate the heart\u0027s performance with a sophisticated blood flow computer simulation.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EThe work was presented this month at the American Heart Association\u0027s Scientific Sessions meeting in Chicago and has been published in \u003Cem\u003ECirculation\u003C\/em\u003E and the \u003Cem\u003EAnnals of Thoracic Surgery\u003C\/em\u003E.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0022We use the MRI images and time data to create models of these children\u0027s vascular systems and hearts to simulate how they currently work and how they could work after surgery,\u0022 said Ajit Yoganathan, Ph.D., a co-principal investigator on the project and associate chair of the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. \u0022The goal is to improve the quality of life for these children by understanding their current physiology and finding the best way to optimize the surgery for that particular child.\u0022\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EWhile the program isn\u0027t yet ready for use by surgeons outside the project, it could be available in about three to five years, Yoganathan said.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EAlthough the normal heart has two ventricles or lower chambers of the heart used for pumping blood through the body, two out of every 1,000 babies in the United States are born with just one lower chamber. Considered one of the most complex congenital heart defects, a single-ventricle heart often leads to congestive heart failure if not repaired.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EPatients with this defect often undergo multiple surgeries to reconfigure the pulmonary and systemic systems in operations called Fontan repairs, a reconfiguration that diverts the blood flow coming to the right side of the heart directly to the lungs so that the heart no longer has to pump blood to the lungs. Staged over several years, these surgeries are a common, but not always successful, option used for treating a single-ventricle defect.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EAfter a less-than-optimal operation, children sometimes experience a reduced capacity to perform physical activities and may experience blood clotting and ventricle arrhythmias. The Georgia Tech\/Emory surgery planning system could eliminate the need for additional surgeries by optimizing early surgeries.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0022The research is meant to get at the root of the \u0027failing\u0027 Fontan, investigating why these pumping chambers fail in the hopes of devising new strategies to give these children a second chance in life. Using advanced imaging and bioengineering tools, the project hopes to describe how blood flows in this type of circulation and how this blood flow might be altered to extend the life of the patients,\u0022 said Mark Fogel, M.D., director of cardiac MR in the Cardiac Center at Children\u0027s Hospital and a key collaborator on the project.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EThe Georgia Tech\/Emory team began work on a system to help surgeons address the unique challenges of Fontan repair. In essence, the system determines how any geometric change in the current heart configuration will change blood flow and strength.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003ETo perfect their system, researchers combined computational and experimental studies to create a method of assessing an optimum vessel configuration. The group worked heavily with fluid dynamic studies in the lab to get the most accurate simulation of blood flow.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EAnother tool, developed by a team led by Jaroslaw Rossignac Ph.D. in Georgia Tech\u0027s College of Computing, is a program that allows for manipulation of a 3-D model of a patient\u0027s cardiovascular system to try out different configurations with a mouse. Once the surgeon has the desired configuration, the new vascular configuration can then be tested with the Image-based surgical planning system to see how well the new surgical procedure would perform.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EGeorgia Tech and Emory completed the engineering aspects of the study with assistance from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The MRI and patient studies were gathered at CHOP and Children\u0027s Healthcare of Atlanta\u0027s Sibley Heart Center.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EWhile the patient MRI database is currently only accessible to project participants, researchers are working with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which funded the project, to open the database to other pediatric cardiologists and cardiac surgeons.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":[{"value":"Georgia Tech\/Emory technology could help surgeons plan optimum surgery for each child\u0027s congenital heart defect"}],"field_summary":[{"value":"Georgia Tech and Emory University researchers have developed an innovative new technology that will help pediatric cardiac surgeons design and test a customized surgical procedure before they ever pick up a scalpel. With a better understanding of each child\u0027s unique heart defect, surgeons could greatly improve the likelihood that children with complex defects requiring multiple surgeries over a period of several years could have smoother recoveries and an improved quality of life after their operations.","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Helps surgeons plan best procedure for each child"}],"uid":"27281","created_gmt":"2006-11-28 01:00:00","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:01:37","author":"Lisa Grovenstein","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2006-11-28T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2006-11-28T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"72536":{"id":"72536","type":"image","title":"Heart modeling","body":null,"created":"1449177934","gmt_created":"2015-12-03 21:25:34","changed":"1475894658","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:44:18"}},"media_ids":["72536"],"related_links":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.chop.edu\/consumer\/index.jsp","title":"The Children\\\u0027s Hospital of Philadelphia"},{"url":"http:\/\/www.bme.gatech.edu\/","title":"Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering"},{"url":"http:\/\/www.bme.gatech.edu\/groups\/cfmg\/group\/index1.html","title":"Cardiovascular Fluid Mechanics Research Lab"}],"groups":[{"id":"1214","name":"News Room"}],"categories":[{"id":"145","name":"Engineering"},{"id":"135","name":"Research"}],"keywords":[{"id":"2582","name":"Ajit Yoganathan"},{"id":"249","name":"Biomedical Engineering"},{"id":"1503","name":"Biotechnology"},{"id":"2580","name":"cardiac surgery"},{"id":"2581","name":"cardiology"},{"id":"2305","name":"Emory University"},{"id":"2584","name":"fluid dynamics"},{"id":"2586","name":"Fontan"},{"id":"109","name":"Georgia Tech"},{"id":"2583","name":"heart"},{"id":"1913","name":"MRI"},{"id":"2585","name":"pediatric"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cstrong\u003ELisa Grovenstein\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECommunications \u0026amp; Marketing\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.gatech.edu\/contact\/index.html?id=lgrovenste3\u0022\u003EContact Lisa Grovenstein\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003E404-894-8835\u003C\/strong\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["lisa.grovenstein@comm.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}