Interventional Cardiac Catheterization for Children
Preface
Since its invention, cardiac catheterization had revolutionized the ways how heart diseases were approached, providing benefits in both diagnosis and treatment. Over the past few decades, as the equipment and technologies kept evolving, transcatheter intervention have only become more and more dominant in the daily practices of cardiologists.
As for pediatric cardiologists, who generally specialized in dealing with both congenital and structural heart diseases, intervention catheterization has become the most important if not the most important weapon in the treatment arsenal.
Target patients
Catheterization may be indicated for patients with symptomatic congenital and structural heart diseases. The possible signs and symptoms include shortness of breath, exercise intolerance, poor body weight gain especially in small children, fatigue, lower limbs swelling, coughing with pink mucus, irregular heartbeats, cyanosis (purplish lips or fingertips), loss of consciousness, or even sudden collapse. Further detailed evaluation by pediatric cardiologist is suggested.
Introduction
An interventional cardiac catheterization is a minimally invasive procedure, with doctors putting catheters (small tubes) into a patient’s heart through few needle punctures at groin and/or neck. These catheters serve as route for accurate evaluation of heart condition and repairment of the heart problems with specially designed devices. The procedure will take place in a special room called catheterization laboratory and performed by a fully-experienced catheter team with members including pediatric intervention cardiologists, radiologists, nursing staffs, and anesthesiologists.
Treatment targets
The procedures can be grossly categorized into “closure” and “dilatation”.
Closure – device or coil closure of abnormal shunting lesions, include atrial septal defects, ventricular septal defects, patent ductus arteriosus, and para-valvular leakage.
Dilatation – balloon dilatation and / or stent implantation for abnormally narrowed valves or vessels.
Figure 1. Device closure of patent ductus arteriosus
Figure 2. Device closure of atrial septal defect
Figure 3. Device closure of ventricular septal defect
Figure 4. Device closure of para-valvular leakage
Figure 5. Balloon valvuloplasty for stenotic pulmonic valve
Special considerations for children
Before the procedure, the child’s doctor will fully explain the treatment plan to the parents or guardians, and we encourage them to discuss the procedure with the kid. This may help eliminate the pre-procedural anxiety. Also, some special rules of food and water intake must be followed.
During the procedure, the child will receive adequate pain control and anesthesia, which means medication usage to keep him or her very drowsy or even completely asleep with free from pain. The whole procedure usually takes from 2 to 4 hours to complete. After the procedure, adequate pain control, wound care, and vital signs monitoring will be arranged for 1-2 days.
Summary
Interventional cardiac catheterization is a very useful and widely applied procedure in pediatric cardiology. Our highly-experienced pediatric catheterization team believes that with the help of advanced technologies and participation of the parents, we can provide individualized treatment plans and repair the heart with less-invasive approach for the best interest of the children.
Estimated Cost
For estimated medical costs, please contact International Medical Services Center.