Cardiac

Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) is one of the largest hospitals in Europe for treating complex cases of congenital heart defects – problems with the heart’s pumping chambers that are present at birth. The development of novel methods to design and assess new cardiovascular devices will be a primary focus of the centre.

Patients with congenital heart disease often need to have complex procedures to correct the defect and there can be large differences between patients with the same condition.

Professor Andrew Taylor, Head of Cardiovascular Imaging at the UCL Institute of Cardiovascular Science, is an international expert in imaging of the heart. The innovations developed by his and other teams at GOSH over the last 50 years have contributed greatly to improving the outcomes of children with rare heart defects.

He uses imaging techniques to identify heart complications and model each child’s individual disease. The models are unique to each patient and may improve clinical decision-making by helping doctors to select which patients are most suitable for particular treatments. The team also uses novel devices called ‘stents’ to treat defective heart valves. This procedure is less invasive than open-heart surgery and the recovery time is much quicker. Since it was introduced, more than 200 children have been treated at the hospital and thousands worldwide.

Professor Taylor would like to do even more, especially for the children who currently cannot benefit from this non-surgical form of valve replacement therapy. The Centre for Research into Rare Disease in Children will allow the team to capitalise on the latest advances in cardiac imaging and computer modelling by providing the space and facilities they urgently need. In the future this will allow the team to design devices that are tailored for each child in a personalised approach to treatment.

“What we want to do is translate these novel technologies into clinical practice"