Tag Archive for: Heart Institute

Yves d'Udekem

Yves d’Udekem, M.D., Ph.D., named Chief of Cardiac Surgery and Co-Director of the Children’s National Heart Institute

Yves d'Udekem

Children’s National Hospital announced that world-class surgeon Yves d’Udekem, M.D., Ph.D., will become the next Chief of Cardiac Surgery and Co-Director of the Children’s National Heart Institute this summer.

Dr. d’Udekem is Belgian-born with Canadian and Australian citizenship and received his early training in Belgium and Toronto. As an attending cardiac surgeon in Belgium, he operated on both adults and children with congenital heart disease. Dr. d’Udekem then worked with internationally recognized heart surgeon Marc de Laval, M.D., FRCS, and others in London to train in congenital heart surgery at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children.

From there, he was recruited to The Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, an institution that has been a leader in advancing the field of congenital heart disease. In Melbourne, Dr. d’Udekem built an outstanding reputation for clinical excellence and an exceptional academic career. He has over 300 publications and is highly cited and respected. Dr. d’Udekem obtained more than $7 million in grant funding over the past five years as the creator and leader of the highly touted Fontan Registry.

The Children’s National Cardiology team and hospital leadership have built a framework for Dr. d’Udekem to succeed and advance the legacy that has been so successfully created in cardiac surgery by Richard Jonas, M.D. Dr. Jonas is a world leader in congenital heart surgery who made significant clinical and academic advances in the field and will continue his award-winning research career at Children’s National in the laboratory focusing on neurodevelopmental outcomes for children with heart disease.

Children’s National offers a comprehensive surgical program that includes a team of experienced surgeons performing the full range of procedures available for treatment of pediatric cardiac disease and congenital heart defects. The high volume program serves neonates through adults with congenital heart disease with particular attention to neurodevelopmental outcomes.

Ricardo Munoz

Ricardo Muñoz, M.D., joins Children’s National as Chief of Cardiac Critical Care Medicine, Executive Director of Telemedicine and Co-Director of Heart Institute

Ricardo Munoz

Children’s National Health System is pleased to announce Ricardo Muñoz, M.D., as chief of the Division of Cardiac Critical Care Medicine and co-director of the Children’s National Heart Institute. Dr. Muñoz also will serve as the executive director of Telemedicine Services at Children’s National, working to leverage advances in technology to improve access to health care for underserved communities and developing nations.

Within the new division of Cardiac Critical Care Medicine, Dr. Muñoz will oversee the work of a multidisciplinary team, including critical care nurse practitioners and nurses, respiratory and physical therapists, nutritionists, social workers and pharmacists, in addition to a medical staff with one of the highest rates of double-boarded specialists in cardiology and critical care.

“We are honored to welcome Dr. Ricardo Muñoz to Children’s National,” says David Wessel, M.D., executive vice president and chief medical officer of Hospital and Specialty Services. “He is a pioneer and innovator in the fields of cardiac critical care and telemedicine and will undoubtedly provide a huge benefit to our patients and their families along with our cardiac critical care and telemedicine teams.”

Dr. Muñoz comes to Children’s National from Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC. During his 15-year tenure there, he established the cardiac intensive care unit and co-led the Heart Center in a multidisciplinary effort to achieve some of the best outcomes in the nation. He also is credited with pioneering telemedicine for pediatric critical care, providing nearly 4,000 consultations globally.

“Children’s National has a longstanding reputation of excellence in cardiac critical care, and I am pleased to be able to join the team in our nation’s capital to not only deliver top-quality care to patients regionally, but also around the world,” says Dr. Muñoz. “The early identification and treatment of pediatric congenital heart disease patients has made rapid improvements in recent decades, but there is a shortage of intensivists to care for these children during what is often a complex recovery course.”

Dr. Muñoz attended medical school at the Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla, Colombia, and completed his residency in pediatrics at the Hospital Militar Central, Bógota, Colombia. He continued his training as a general pediatrics and pediatric critical care fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital, and as a pediatric cardiology fellow at Boston Children’s Hospital. He then joined the faculty at Harvard Medical School and served as an attending physician in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at Boston Children’s.

Dr. Muñoz is board certified in pediatrics, pediatric critical care and in pediatric cardiology. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Critical Care Medicine and the American College of Cardiology. Additionally, he is the primary editor and co-author of multiple textbooks and award-winning handbooks in pediatric cardiac intensive care, including Spanish language editions.

Dr. Laura Olivieri holding a 3D printed heart

Cardiology and radiology experts to participate in CMR 2018

Later this month, the international cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) community will gather in Barcelona, Spain, for CMR 2018, a joint meeting organized by the European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging (EACVI) and the Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (SCMR). Among the many attendees will be several cardiology and radiology experts from Children’s National Heart Institute:

  • Pediatric cardiology fellow Ashish Doshi, M.D., will be giving a talk titled, “Subendocardial resting perfusion defect in a case of acute fulminant myocarditis,” and will also present a poster titled, “Native T1 measurements in pediatric heart transplant patients correlate with history of prior rejection episodes.”
  • Pediatric cardiology fellow Rohan Kumthekar, M.D., will present a poster titled, “Native T1 values can identify pediatric patients with myocarditis.”
  • Cardiologist Laura Olivieri, M.D., will present two posters: “Native T1 measurements from CMR identify severity of myocardial disease over time in patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy on therapy,” and “Feasibility of noncontrast T1 and T2 parametric mapping in assessment of acute ventricular ablation lesions in children.”
  • Pediatric cardiology fellow Neeta Sethi, M.D., will present a poster titled, “Cardiac magnetic resonance T2 mapping in the surveillance of acute allograft rejection in pediatric cardiac transplant patients.”

Additionally, Drs. Doshi and Sethi and Ileen Cronin, FNP-BC, a nurse practitioner in the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory/Interventional Cardiac Magnetic Resonance (ICMR) Program, received travel awards to attend the conference.

CMR 2018 will be held January 31-February 3, 2018 and will focus on the theme of “Improving Clinical Value by Technical Advances.” The meeting’s emphasis will be on the common goal of improving clinical outcomes in cardiovascular disease through innovation in basic MR development and medical engineering.

Andrea Beaton and Craig Sable

Assessing the global burden of rheumatic heart disease

Andrea Beaton and Craig Sable

A research team that included Children’s National Heart Institute experts Andrea Beaton, M.D., and Craig Sable, M.D., examined data on fatal and nonfatal Rheumatic Heart Disease for a 25 year period from 1990 through 2015 to determine the current global burden of RHD.

Rheumatic Heart Disease (RHD) is the most commonly acquired heart disease in young people under the age of 25. It’s caused by untreated streptococcal throat infections that progress into acute rheumatic fever and eventually weaken the valves of the heart. Fortunately, the devastating condition, which was endemic in the United States before 1950, is now relatively rare in the developed world due to social and economic development and the introduction of penicillin. But, as shown in a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, in the developing world, RHD remains nearly as common as HIV.

As part of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease Study, a research team that included Children’s National Heart Institute experts Andrea Beaton, M.D., and Craig Sable, M.D., examined data on fatal and nonfatal RHD for a 25 year period from 1990 through 2015 to determine the current global burden of RHD. The group employed epidemiologic modeling techniques to estimate the global, regional and national prevalence of RHD, as well as death rates and disability-adjusted life years attributable to the disease.

“This study provides more detail than ever before about the global impact of RHD,” explains Dr. Sable. “It utilizes global burden of disease tools that are updated on an annual basis. These tools are considered highly reputable and allow for ongoing tracking and comparison to other diseases.”

The researchers found that overall, death rates from RHD have declined: there were 347,500 deaths from RHD in 1990 and 319,400 deaths in 2015, a decrease of 8 percent. From 1990 to 2015, the global age-standardized death rate from RHD also decreased from 9.2 to 4.8 per 100,000 — a change of 48 percent.

However, a closer look at the data shows that progress on RHD remains uneven. Although the health-related burden of RHD has declined in most countries over the 25-year period, the condition persists in some of the poorest regions in the world, with the highest estimated death rates in Central African Republic, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, India, Kiribati, Lesotho, Marshall Islands, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. In several regions, mortality from RHD and the number of individuals living with RHD did not appreciably decline between 1990 and 2015. The researchers estimate that 10 out of every 1,000 people living in South Asia and central sub-Saharan Africa and 15 out of 1,000 people in Oceania were living with RHD in 2015.

“These data are critically important for increasing awareness and funding to reduce the global burden of rheumatic heart disease,” says Dr. Sable. “Dr. Beaton and I are proud to be part of a small team of global investigators leading this effort.”

Children’s National Health System was recently awarded a grant from the American Heart Association to launch a Rheumatic Heart Disease Center, with the goal of developing innovative strategies and economic incentives to improve the prevention and diagnosis of RHD in high-risk, financially disadvantaged countries and low-income communities across the United States. The program will use Children’s robust telemedicine infrastructure to connect co-collaborators around the world, as well as train the next generation of globally minded cardiovascular researchers.