171 Ashley Ave.
Charleston, SC 29425
843-792-1414
800-424-MUSC
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April 2009
This month's newsletter is a particular pleasure for me because it focuses on heart disease in children and my specialty is Pediatric Cardiology. I wanted to discuss two aspects of our program at MUSC and in South Carolina that are somewhat unique. The first, and the one that impacts the residents of our state the most, is a consortium of the pediatric cardiologists across the state known as The Children's Heart Program of South Carolina. Eleven specialists are with us at MUSC, four are at USC in Columbia, four are in the Greenville Hospital System, and one is in Florence. This collaborative program allows children with heart defects to be treated as locally as possible for their outpatient care but it also allows children in need of special procedures, such as heart catheterization or cardiac surgery, to be treated at MUSC where they benefit from the experience of a larger center.
Cardiac surgeons at MUSC perform more than 350 heart operations each year on children, allowing the development of great expertise in life saving surgery on the smallest of patients. If, for instance, a fetus in need of surgery is identified in the western part of the state, the mother's care can be transferred to MUSC prior to birth so her child can receive treatment within the first week of life. This unique network has helped promote the best results found anywhere in the world for our pediatric patients. Furthermore, it is highly efficient and prevents duplication of services during this resource-limited time for our state.
The second program I wanted to discuss is the Pediatric Heart Research Network (PHN), funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health. MUSC is one of eight primary clinical centers nationwide in this network which has the mission of performing prospective clinical trials in children with heart disease. A network is necessary because no one pediatric cardiac center is large enough to perform such trials. Already, the results have led to significant changes in how we care for children with congenital and acquired heart disease. For example, the first ever trial of two different surgical procedures for patients born with three chambered hearts has just completed enrollment. Early results suggest it may completely change the dominant approach for the care of such patients, a result that would have never been known had the PHN not been in place. So MUSC is indeed proud to be a part of this prestigious network, again enhancing the cardiac care of our state residents.
Finally, I'd like to comment on where research may take us in children's cardiac care. Currently, most of our care is directed at "fixing" the heart problem - closing the hole, opening the valve, etc. However, in the not-so-distant future, I believe our enhanced understanding of heart development combined with stem cell technology will lead to a time where we "fix" the damaged part or replace the whole heart with a brand new part derived from the body's own stem cells, eliminating long term issues with either rejection or foreign material in the body. Such a scenario may not be right around the corner but I do see it occurring within the next five to 15 years.
So to summarize, we are indeed fortunate at MUSC and in South Carolina to have superlative state-of-the-art pediatric cardiac care in the present and to also be a part of developing paradigms of care to take us into the future. I look forward to seeing these developments come to fruition and to continuing to provide the best care possible to our patients and families.
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J. Philip Saul, MD
Medical Director
Director, Pediatric Cardiology |
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