Better view of young hearts, at a price

Niko Danielsen has his heart monitored with a new system by Starship Heart Unit clinical director Dr Tom Gentles. Picture / Kenny Rodger

One-year-old Niko Danielsen clutches a cellphone while a doctor presses a hand-held scanning device to his small chest. At the edge of the hospital bed, a video image of his heart pulses on a screen.

"Now we can pick the heart up and have a look around," says Dr Tom Gentles, clinical director of paediatric cardiology at Auckland's Starship Heart Unit.

He rotates the image for a new view, this time looking at the bottom of the heart.

The machine is the latest echocardiography system, something the hospital says it can use to treat more than 1000 children from all over New Zealand each year - if fundraising succeeds.

The machine makes diagnosis and treatment of serious heart conditions much quicker and more accurate but comes with a steep price tag - $398,000. Dr Gentles only has it on loan for a few days, and none of his staff have been trained to use it.

"It's very difficult for us to keep up with the advances through the public system," says Dr Gentles.

He changes the screen, pulling up a pair of motionless, two-dimensional images. "Prior to this, the best we could see were these kinds of images," he says.

For Niko it means doctors will be able to see vessels repaired only seven days after his birth. He underwent 14 hours of surgery to deal with three life-threatening heart conditions - a hole in his heart, a narrowed aorta and crossed arteries.

Now doctors need to make sure that scar tissue doesn't hamper growth.

"Some of those vessels are difficult to see with regular types of ultrasound," says Dr Gentles. The new machine will give him the best view.

But Niko's father doesn't expect the machine to show anything out of the ordinary.

"From the time he wakes up to the time he goes to bed, there's no slow speed," he says.

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