Taking research to heart: doctors at U of C developing new test to improve defect diagnosis
Researchers at the University of Calgary are working with scientists in the U.S. to try and improve diagnosis and treatment of people with a common and dangerous heart defect.
About two-in-every-100 people are born with a bicuspid aortic valve — meaning they having two flaps in the aorta instead of the usual three.
That can lead to an aneurysm, which can rupture, meaning sudden death.
Christopher Ames found out he had a bicuspid aortic valve when he was looking to join the Canadian Armed Forces at age 17. That discovery triggered years of tests and ultimately, open heart surgery.
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"Once they'd taken it out they determined that it was a 5.5 centimetre aneurysm, which is quite a large aneurysm, in my aorta," he told CBC News.
Right now doctors base treatment decisions solely on the size of someone's aneurysm.
"We can't just treat them all the same way, it's just too simple to use the dimension as our guideline," said Dr. Paul Fedak, a U of C professor and cardiac surgeon.
Instead, researchers are now using what's called a 4D Flow MRI to visualize blood flow patterns in real time, which Fedak hopes will help doctors make key decisions.
"Should we be taking them to the operating room right away and doing a big, open-heart procedure that could take hours and is potentially risky to replace that aorta and prevent it from rupturing or a problem down the road?" he said.
"We need to know who is most at risk to be able to individualize our strategies for surgery for these patients. Otherwise we'd be doing a lot of surgeries on patients who maybe don't need it, or potentially, if we don't do the surgery, missing people who are potentially at risk."
Over the next five years, researchers at U of C and Northwestern University in Chicago will analyse the tissue of 450 patients to see if the technology works to predict patient outcomes, thanks to a $3.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.
