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telemedicine control room

Telehealth connects pediatric heart experts about critical COVID-19 details

telemedicine control room

Telehealth is more than a doctor-to-patient tool during COVID-19. Experts in congenital heart disease meet weekly to share details about how it affects their vulnerable patients.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth has been crucial in allowing doctors to maintain safe contact with patients who require ongoing medical care without an office visit. Just as important is the role that telehealth is playing to connect care providers with each other to ensure that everyone around the world has the information they need to provide the best care possible for this swift-moving disease.

One good example of this specialist-to-specialist thought leadership connection is the ongoing weekly meeting hosted by the Children’s National Hospital cardiac critical care specialists. Since early in the spread of COVID-19, the Cardiac-ICU team, led by cardiovascular specialists including Ricardo Munoz, M.D., chief of cardiac critical care medicine and executive director of telehealth at Children’s National, have connected pediatric clinicians around the world to discuss how best to care for particularly vulnerable patients with pre-existing heart diseases, and to discuss breaking news in epidemiology of the disease and the effectiveness of various treatment approaches.

The video conference attracts hundreds of physicians and nurses who specialize in pediatric cardiac care from countries all over the world. In the last week of April, the meeting featured a late-breaking session to discuss new pediatric intensive care observations of inflammatory symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease, which were being detected in the United Kingdom, Paris and the United States. While more information is needed about this discovery, the ability of these experts to gather and compare disease phenotypes from country to country facilitates both the additional classification of pediatric-related symptoms and improves how all centers, no matter their location, can prepare to treat children who present locally with these symptoms.

In recent weeks, cardiac physicians and nurses from some of the world’s hardest hit regions, including Italy and Spain, have shared detailed information about their on-the-ground experiences to help colleagues in the U.S. and elsewhere better prepare for new developments.

“This new disease is a moving target, especially when it comes to understanding how it might impact children and adults with existing cardiac disease, particularly those with congenital heart disease,” says Dr. Munoz. “It is extremely important that we learn from each other, especially when we are able to connect with our colleagues in the epicenters of the most serious outbreaks of COVID-19. We are happy to host this important weekly meeting with the goal of helping every specialist keep as many patients with cardiac diseases as safe as possible throughout the global health emergency.”

If you would like to join these weekly telehealth meetings, please send your request to COVIDMultiCICUResponse@childrensnational.org.