NBCNews.com: New Stents for Infants Mean Kids Could Avoid Series of Open-Heart Operations
NBCNews.com recently featured Evan Zahn, MD, director of the Pediatric Congenital Heart Program at Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children’s and the Smidt Heart Institute, discussing a new, first-of-its-kind stent made for babies and young children born with a heart defect that narrows the blood vessels.
The stent is a mesh metal tube that keeps blood vessels in the aorta and pulmonary arteries open, ensuring proper blood flow to the heart. These smaller stents are adjustable and expand as children grow and their hearts and blood vessels get bigger.
Zahn, who helped develop the stent, told NBCNews.com medical reporter Akshay Syal, MD, that the device is a “game-changer” because surgeons previously had to use adult-size stents in infant hearts.
“What we’ve been doing for the past three decades is kind of jerry-rigging these adult stents and making them work for our patients,” Zahn said. “You can imagine that is less than ideal—they’re too big.”
Zahn told Syal that a minimally invasive procedure can be used to expand the new stent instead of replacing it, which helps children avoid open-heart surgeries as they grow.
“It’s not unusual to have kids who are going into middle school who’ve had four or five or even six open heart surgeries,” he said. “Their survival is great, but the amount of what I call ‘therapeutic trauma’ that they have to go through is quite a burden.”
Zahn recently placed one of the new stents in an infant’s heart, and the baby is doing well today.
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