The Sant Joan de Deu Barcelona Hospital and the Barcelona Clinic have established the Center for Congenital Heart Diseases, which provides collaborative care for children born with heart anomalies through all stages of life. SANTO JOAN DE DEU – The Clinic Barcelona Congenital Heart Disease Center was announced today by the Minister of Health of Catalonia. Manel Balcells; Stefano CongiuDirector of Cardiovascular Surgery, Sant Joan de Deu Hospital. Marta SitgesDirector of the Cardiovascular Institute of Barcelona Hospital, Daniel Peredadirector of the new center and consultant for the clinic’s cardiovascular surgery service.

Every year in Catalonia, 600 children are born with congenital heart defects, whether caused by structural problems with the heart (such as the ventricles or valves) or the large vessels in the chest. suffering from a disease. 30% of cases are severe heart disease. Thanks to advances in recent decades, 95% of these children reach adulthood. But they do so for very specific needs.

In this context, the Congenital Heart Disease Center operated by the Sant Joan de Déu Hospital and the Barcelona Instituto Hospital has been established since the successful management of the Congenital Heart Disease Center by the same team of experts who treat patients for the rest of their lives. was established to enable monitoring and treatment through Patients with cardiovascular disease rely on high-quality multidisciplinary care and long-term follow-up strategies that ensure continuity throughout adulthood. Therefore, having a specialized, integrated center with a transversal vision is key to improving the quality of care for these patients.

The new center has two branches, one at the Sant Joan de Deu Hospital and the other at the Hospital Clinic. Together, the companies will offer a complete and complementary portfolio of services and will be staffed by a team of 23 experts, including cardiovascular surgeons, cardiologists, pediatricians and anesthetists.

First minimally invasive heart surgery for children in Spain

Furthermore, the establishment of this center in partnership with the Sant Joan de Deu Hospital and Clinic will allow surgical techniques not previously used in the field of pediatric cardiac surgery to be extended to children. Masu. However, it is already being implemented in adults. This is the case with minimally invasive thoracoscopic surgery and robotic surgery. Until now, children and young people with congenital heart disease who needed surgery had to undergo open surgery, but this resulted in long postoperative and recovery periods and a significant loss of aesthetics.

The new Congenital Heart Disease Center has already performed five such surgeries on children. In three cases, the experts chose thoracoscopic surgery. This consists of making a small incision in the child’s chest and inserting a device equipped with a video camera, allowing the surgeon to see the surgical area and the instruments needed to perform the surgery. The first girl to undergo surgery using this technique had a heart tumor that required removal. The youngest patient to undergo surgery at the center so far was a 6-year-old girl.

First case of robotic surgery in children

In two other cases, experts opted for robotic heart surgery. The first pediatric patient to undergo surgery with the help of a robot was a 13-year-old girl from the Basque Country. She had a congenital ostium primum type interatrial communication (both atria are connected) and a defect in her mitral valve. These malformations caused abnormalities and imbalances in blood flow within the heart, overloading the right side of the heart and leading to heart failure in the long term.

In addition, this patient’s disease was exacerbated by very pronounced scoliosis, making access to the heart difficult. So the cardiac surgeon decided to use a surgical robot to make four small incisions (each incision is 8 mm in diameter) in the patient’s chest and insert a camera into the patient’s heart to determine the surgical area and which instruments were used. Now you can check whether it is done or not. Required to perform the operation. In this way, the medical team at the Congenital Heart Disease Center succeeded in closing the connection between her two atria on the one hand, and on the other hand, repairing the damaged mitral valve. The surgery, which took place in November, took four hours and involved 10 specialists.

The second patient who underwent surgery using robotic heart surgery was a 15-year-old boy who had been treated for a catheter-based interatrial communication and had developed an obstructive device infection (endocarditis).

Daniel Pereda, director of the center, explains that in children, robotic surgery is limited by the size and age of the patient, as surgical instruments are thought and designed for adults.

Therefore, surgeons are currently considering this option only for older children and adolescents. The main candidates for this type of surgery are those with conditions such as interatrial communication (unable to resolve with catheterization), mitral or tricuspid valve problems, and cardiac tumors. The plan is to operate on a dozen patients each year using minimally invasive robotic surgery, starting with 20 thoracoscopic surgeries a year.