Entrepreneurship for Cardiovascular Health Opportunities (ECHO) is a 12-month national training program supporting cardiovascular research commercialization through education, mentorship, networking, and funding. Led by a diverse team of experts, ECHO fosters...
Entrepreneurship for Cardiovascular Health Opportunities (ECHO) is a 12-month national training program supporting cardiovascular research commercialization through education, mentorship, networking, and funding. Led by a diverse team of experts, ECHO fosters...
The Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research is thrilled to welcome Dr. Cedric Manlhiot as the inaugural Rogers Innovator of Cardiovascular Precision Medicine at SickKids. In addition to his role at TRCHR, Dr. Manlhiot will be a Scientist in the Translational Medicine...
Entrepreneurship for Cardiovascular Health Opportunities (ECHO) is a 12-month national training program supporting cardiovascular research commercialization through education, mentorship, networking, and funding. Led by a diverse team of experts, ECHO fosters...
Launching in March 2024, emergency department (ED) physicians at the University Health Network (UHN) can now access the Emergency Heart Failure Mortality Risk Grade (EHMRG) calculator within Epic, UHN’s electronic medical record. The EHMRG score estimates the risk of...
Cardiomyopathy is a leading cause of heart failure in children, and there are currently no effective treatments. Could emerging therapies that successfully target the root cause of the condition in adults also work well in children? That was the question Dr....
One of three Ted Rogers Centre Innovation Fund awards in 2016 went to a research group pursuing a novel mechanical support system for children and adults who have a failing “Fontan” circulation.
Patients born with only one functional ventricle need multiple open-heart surgeries to make the circulation sustailable. The Fontan operation permits children born with this type of congenital heart disease to survive but due to the lack of a second ventricle pumping blood to the lungs, patients with the Fontan circulation have a high rate of late circulation failure and death.
The number of adolescents and adults with Fontan circulation has been exponentially growing worldwide. At least 1,000 patients are estimated here in Canada. Fortunately, there are novel devices being explored in research that could potentially function function as that second ventricle, and thus reduce the long-term risks these patients face.
Dr. Osami Honjo (SickKids) has collaborated with Dr. Lucy Roche (UHN), Cristina Amon (U of T) and Dr. Thomas Forbes (UHN), combining expertise in cardiovascular medicine and mechanical and biomedical engineering.
Together, they aim to develop just such a mechanical device, one that can improve the physiology and pumping ability of these patients’ hearts. Collaboration is key to this research as, combined, SickKids and UHN have the world’s largest Fontan population – thus are the ideal locations to meet this challenge.
As it stands there are no medications to treat Fontan failure, nor any medical devices to support patients as a bridge to a successful heart transplant. Dr. Honjo will guide this project, which will study this circulation in many different degrees, in patients at many ages, to understand its pathology and improve patient outcomes.
Using computational fluid dynamics, they will build an innovative new device that is minimally invasive, which will help patients live longer and have better transplant outcomes.
(Picture at top: a wooden platform that a mock circulatory loop of the Fontan circulation)
