Explaining the state of a congenital heart defect is complicated, but it’s a crucial step in helping the care team understand and support their patients’ needs. A thorough understanding of hemodynamics, and an enhanced recognition of hemodynamic decompensation, is particularly important.
However, the lack of available tools to accurately illustrate each patient’s current state, as well as illustrating the changes that occur as the patient progresses through procedures, creates a challenge. In the past, practitioners had to rely on basic illustrations of common defects — or try to illustrate defect themselves using free-hand sketches.
MyHeartArt changes all that. Developed by Children’s Mercy Hospital, the easy to use digital tool, allows anyone on the care team to quickly produce an anatomically-correct, artist-quality rendering of a patient’s specific congenital heart defect. The illustration becomes an invaluable tool to help the team understand the specifics of the patient’s situation, capturing an anomaly in the size or location of an area in the heart as well as illustrating intracardiac shunts, mechanical valves, stents, blood clots, and more.
Children's Mercy Hospital
Children's Mercy Kansas City is ranked as one of “America's Best Children's Hospitals” in all 10 specialties rated by U.S. News & World Report and has received Magnet™ recognition for excellence in nursing services five consecutive times. With 390 licensed beds and a medical staff of more than 750 pediatric sub-specialists, we care for children from all 50 states and from around the world.
In addition, our leadership in pediatric genomic medicine and individualized pediatric therapeutics is driving research and innovation in neonatology, nephrology, endocrinology, gastroenterology, neurology, heart, cancer and other subspecialties to transform outcomes for children.
Children’s Mercy Kansas City also is nationally recognized for innovation in psychosocial care and creating a family-centered environment focused on the unique needs of hospitalized children and their families.
Our love for children powers everything we do, inspiring our research, innovations and our everyday care. Because love has no limits. And with it, neither do we.
