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Premature Babies at MUSC Children’s Hospital Benefit from New Echocardiography Technology
June 12, 2009
Thanks to a new miniature ultrasound device being used at the Medical University of South Carolina Children’s Hospital, three-week old Ryleigh's heart defect was detected and repaired in one afternoon.
According to the group Little Hearts, there are approximately 40,000 babies born each year with congenital heart defects. In most cases, neonatalogists use echocardiography to diagnose these defects. However, many babies born prematurely are too small for current diagnostic equipment.
Doctors at MUSC Children's Hospital are among the first in the country to use the microTEE, the world’s first transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) transducer specifically designed for cardiac imaging of neonatal patients. Developed and produced by Phillips, the microTEE transducer provides pediatric cardiologists with a diagnostic tool for imaging the hearts of newborn patients. Philips microTEE will be showcased this week at the 20th Annual American Society of Echocardiography (ASE) in Washington, D.C.
"The microTEE probe is a major advance in our ability to safely provide intra-operative cardiac imaging in newborn babies and infants,” said Dr. Girish Shirali, M.D., director of pediatric echocardiography at Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). “We are delighted with the image quality, and the miniaturization of the probe has already proven invaluable to our pediatric interventionalists in high-risk cath lab procedures. Finally, our smallest and sickest patients can be imaged intra-operatively just like everyone else.”
MUSC doctors gently inserted the probe down tiny Ryleigh's throat to diagnose her heart defect and then, with the echocardiographic device still monitoring her heart, repaired one of the unbalanced chambers in the girl's heart with a band that effectively tightened the opening.
According to Shirali, most current diagnostic imaging tools are too large for preemies and babies born under three pounds.
Phillips officials said that the microTEE transducer is roughly one-third the size of previous pediatric TEE transducers, allowing physicians to ‘turn on the lights’ for the first time for their tinier patients providing the images they need to aid in intervention. Available globally in summer 2009, the new microTEE is also entering trials for adult patients requiring TEE imaging but who have difficulty tolerating standard TEE probes.
“With this new echocardiography technology, we can look at the heart anatomy during the procedure and actually determine immediately if the surgery or procedure is successful,” said Dr. Eric Graham, pediatric cardiologist who assisted during the procedure on Ryleigh.
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