Software Tool Simulates Results of Pediatric Heart Surgery

A software tool that simulates blood flow on a computer can help optimize surgical design in babies born with severe congenital heart defects.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD, USA) and Stanford University (CA, USA) developed the new computational tool to assist surgeons in planning Fontan surgery, one of three procedures performed immediately after birth to redirect the circulation of children born with a missing or underdeveloped left ventricle. The tool first uses imaging data to construct a model of an individual baby's heart. Surgeons can then use a computer to systematically explore different potential surgical designs, using powerful optimization algorithms. Fluid dynamics can then be used to simulate the blood flow after reconstruction, allowing the surgeons to test their surgical designs and evaluate future blood-flow patterns before actually operating. The new software tool was presented at the 62nd Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society's (APS) Division of Fluid Dynamics, held during November 2009 in Minneapolis (MN, USA).

"Our ultimate goal is to optimize surgeries that are tailored for individual patients so that we don't have to rely on a ‘one-size fits all' solution,” said study presenter Alison Marsden, M.D., of UCSD.

The Fontan procedure is a palliative surgical procedure used in children with complex congenital heart defects. It involves diverting the venous blood from the right atrium to the pulmonary arteries without passing through the morphologic right ventricle, essentially connecting the veins that would normally bring blood into the right side of the heart with the pulmonary arteries, allowing the patient to survive with only one functional pumping chamber. It was initially described in 1971 as a surgical treatment for tricuspid atresia.

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University of California, San Diego
Stanford University