One of the best kept secrets at Children’s Hospital is that some of the best possible cardiac care for children is right here in London — and a big piece of that came directly from donors.
The paediatric cardiology team prides themselves on developing long-lasting relationships with the patients in their care. They’ll follow children who have cardiac conditions for their entire lives, possibly from before birth right up to adulthood.
The “Cadillac” of the department, says department manager Travis Kowlessar, is the Voluson echocardiography machine — generously funded by Children’s Health Foundation donors.
In the hands of the expert sonographers on the paediatric cardiology team, the Voluson can detect heart defects in fetuses still developing in the womb.
The Voluson “has put us on a whole other level of being able to detect and diagnose complex congenital defects in the fetus,” Travis says. Mothers-to-be who have genetic predispositions towards cardiac issues and heart defects can receive their first fetal echocardiogram anywhere from 18-24 weeks gestation.
Finding the tiny cues that something isn’t right in a heart smaller than your thumb takes considerable training. By the time a sonographer is ready to start doing fetal echocardiography, they’re at least 6-7 years into their career, Travis says.
“The fetal echo program is laborious. The scans take a long time,” Travis explains. “It takes our sonographers out of the mix of the clinic for upwards of an hour, or maybe more of the day, which is huge. You can scan three kids in that time, so it can be taxing on our program. With the baby positions and movements, every image you’ve got to fight for. They’re not just lying on a bed, letting you scan them — they’re wriggling around and you can’t track them, so you have to take your time position the mom and try to get what you can when you can.”
All that time and effort proves its worth when potentially life-threatening heart defects are detected early. Children’s Heroes Ambassador Jack’s health care team caught a major heart defect the day he was born, and his mom, Alex, says that’s what saved his life.
“We were getting ready to go home,” she says. “Without the team catching his odd breathing, he wouldn’t have made it.” You can read more about Jack right here.
In Jack’s case, no scans in utero picked up on his condition. However, Children’s Heroes Ambassador Cordelia was diagnosed with a heart defect before she was even born. As a result, she underwent life-saving open-heart surgery at just five days old — you can read more of her story right here.
Having the high-tech Voluson at the paediatric cardiology clinic at Children’s Hospital has many cascading benefits. Families from Western Ontario no longer have to travel to Toronto to receive a fetal echocardiograph, which eases burdens and reduces wait times.
The clinic’s experts also regularly share their knowledge and experience with regional partners from Windsor, Sarnia, Owen Sound and Thunder Bay, among others.
Travis says that with the Voluson, the paediatric cardiology clinic at Children’s Hospital is “one of the best centres in Canada, with some of the best technology in the world for Fetal Echocardiography, and it’s allowed us to provide the patient care that we really want to provide.
“This was a huge thing and the foundation was an incredible help. You know, we asked them and they came through and we couldn’t be more happy.”
Nevertheless, the paediatric cardiology team has more goals for improving patient care.
Even with the expertise on-hand, patients with non-urgent cardiac conditions face up to a one-year wait time for an echocardiogram — a very long time for worried parents even in non-urgent situations. A new echocardiography machine will help the team reduce that wait — and that much additional worry, too — significantly.
Be sure to tune in to Corus Radiothon on Thursday, March 6 to hear updates from Jack, Cordelia and many other Children’s Heroes Ambassadors!
You have a rare opportunity to help the paediatric cardiology team — until March 6, CPKC is generously matching donations to paediatric cardiology care at Children’s Hospital. To double your impact when supporting this team, donate below:
