My name is Alicia Chaves. I'm a pediatric cardiologist
at the University of Maryland Children's Heart Program.
As a pediatric cardiologist, I take care of kids with congenital or acquired heart disease
and that can be a whole spectrum actually from fetus into young adulthood.
My particular specialty is in non-invasive imaging
and what that means is basically that we use a lot of different imaging studies
to try and diagnose and help to monitor
congenital heart disease and other types of heart disease in children.
We try and make things as painless and as simple as possible.
In the past, if we had a child that we suspected a heart defect in,
we would have to do a procedure that involved
using anesthesia where the patient would go to sleep.
We would have to use needles and catheters that would go inside the body
and try and diagnose things in that way.
Now we can do much more simple procedures like ultrasound or MRI.
Which other than having the patient sit still, it doesn't really
require too much discomfort on their part.
And we're able to get very accurate information
and probably even more accurate information in some cases than we were 20 years ago.
From images, for example an echocardiogram,
which is simply an ultrasound of the heart,
we take many different pictures and we're
able to, in our minds, reconstruct what the anatomy of the heart is and see
things like holes in the heart, valve problems and various other more complex
forms of congenital heart disease and then with that information we can put it
all together and we can talk to the families about that.
That's one of the things that, especially I think with fetal echocardiogram, which is doing the
same kind of thing but on the baby before it's born,
we're able to give parents a lot of information about what is going on with
their child and what the problem with the heart is and then we can also give
them an idea of what's going to happen.
So we can help them to plan, to prepare
and to understand where their child is going to be
in six months or further down the road.
We often get patients referred to us by obstetricians who might notice something
on the regular prenatal ultrasound that's abnormal about the heart.
And then when we see them we'll do an ultrasound looking specifically at the baby's heart
and try to figure out what's going on.
I think, you know, for many families being pregnant as an exciting time
and they're very anxious to see their child and meet them and
then to have something thrown on top of that as a concern about the heart can be
very stressful and scary.
So we hope to be able to figure out exactly what is
going on with the baby's heart and then to explain that to the parents.
Not that they're not going to worry because we know they're gonna worry
because they're parents and even before the baby's born, they're parents,
but we hope that we can at least give them information
and sometimes that helps to get rid of some of the fear and some of the anxiety.
And to help them prepare because giving
birth in and of itself is a stressful time, but if the baby is sick on top of
that and may need to stay in the hospital, it helps to be able to know
how long, what's going to happen exactly after the baby's born so that they
can prepare, not only just the logistical things, but actually just emotionally
prepare for what's gonna happen.
In some cases with some types of complex heart
disease it's best if babies are born in a place where there are specialists who
can care for newborns with problems, so a neonatal intensive care units and
pediatric cardiologists available to take care of their child.
And it can be very helpful to be born in a place where those services are available.
If not only for the health of the child, but also for the ease of the family of
having mom in one hospital and a baby in another hospital
it just adds to the stress of the situation.
And having the baby in the correct place can mean we can start
medication sooner, means we can
stabilize the baby sooner and figure out what we need to do next.
Well, I think that we have a dedicated team of physicians who really care about
taking care of families and children.
It's probably true at most places but I think that we really strive to
not just do the medical part right, but also do the family care-oriented part right
and to really help educate families and to counsel them and be there for them.
We also want to be able to provide a good line of communication between
the family and their pediatrician and be able to talk to them
and let them know what's going on with our patients.