HOLLYWOOD, Fla. – Specialists at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital are working with a new approach to treating a heart defect found in the days or weeks after birth.
Pediatric Cardiologist Dr. Brian Boe said the problem occurs when a blood vessel that is normal while a baby is in the womb fails to close after birth, a condition called P.D.A.
Surgery to correct the problem is typically done in the O.R. but for vulnerable premature babies, Boe and his colleagues are now doing it in the NICU to ease the strain on both infant and parents.
“So, what we are doing now and what the neonatology and cardiology teams at Joe DiMaggio hospital have done is we’ve brought the procedure to them. So now we are doing the procedure in the NICU so we don’t have to bring these babies across the hospital to get the procedure performed,” Boe said.
It was a relief to Laura Batista-Arias and her husband Roberto whose daughter Amelia was born prematurely.
“It puts you much more at ease especially being able to have the doctor come to the bedside, have that consult with us and really spend so much time explaining things to us and then walking us with the baby to the procedure,” she said.
It’s not known what causes a PDA, but the condition affects one in two thousand babies each year.
PDAs are more common in girls and pre-term infants.
Researchers at the University of Florida have designed an artificial intelligence system that can predict which patients will develop Alzheimer’s disease up to five years before receiving a diagnosis.
The system analyzes electronic health records for specific risk factors and has proven highly effective in initial studies.
Researchers said more testing is needed before these A.I. tools are available to doctors and their patients.