New Cardiac Catheterization Lab Completed at Wolfson Children's Hospital

Jacksonville, Florida, October 1, 2007 -- Making pediatric cardiovascular patients' hearts healthier will now take less time, with less exposure to radiographic dyes and X-rays and shorter time under heavy sedation or general anesthesia. This will result in reduced risk for complications.

Making these advantages possible to pediatric heart patients throughout our region is the October 2 opening of Wolfson Children's Hospital's new cardiac catheterization laboratory in the Children's Heart Center. The lab is the first pediatric lab to feature this new technology by GE Healthcare, and the fourth in the world. Wolfson will be a beta site that will draw pediatric cardiologists from throughout the country to observe the equipment in use.

The new lab will eventually replace the cardiac cath lab that opened in 1996 and will use flat-panel, biplane acquisition, completely digital technology called Innova 2121 that was custom-designed for Wolfson.

"The Innova 2121 significantly enhances the quality of images," says pediatric cardiologist Jose Ettedgui, MD, medical director of the University of Florida Pediatric Cardiovascular Center affiliated with Wolfson Children's Hospital. "It is customized to include the features that are valuable to our cardiologists."

One feature of the new equipment is two imaging arms with angulations that can be achieved independently. "They are combined to get the most information out of each contrast injection for each child so we can minimize their exposure to radiographic dye and X-rays," explains Ettedgui. "We don't have to take multiple pictures of the same structure because we can get the correct angles in one shot."

The build-out of a new cath lab was necessary to accommodate the impressive growth of the pediatric cardiovascular program. "Over the past five years, the volume of work -- from our outpatient evaluations, cath lab procedures, echocardiograms and heart surgeries -- has increased by about 40 percent," says Ettedgui.

The Children's Heart Center is expected to continue on its path of rapid growth fueled by the growth in the Jacksonville population and its neighboring communities. The program receives referrals from the Florida Panhandle, southeast Georgia, and north-central Florida.

"With the strong, collegial partnership between Wolfson Children's Hospital and the University of Florida, we have evolved into a very solid program," says Dr. Ettedgui.