Children's Hospital Boston 300 Longwood Avenue
Boston, MA 02115
(617) 355-6000
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Clinical Services (Cardiovascular Program):
Catheter-based Treatments
Back to New Research & Treatments
Innovations
Physicians from Children's Hospital Boston have developed many new tools and techniques in the field of pediatric cardiac catheterization. Many repairs that would require open surgery elsewhere can be done at Children's by catheterization:
  • Closure of residual leaks around synthetic valves
  • Opening of a tight mitral valve by balloon valvuloplasty
  • Ventricular septal defect closure following heart attacks
  • Treatment of thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension.
Perhaps even more importantly, Children's doctors have carefully scrutinized their own practice, developing one of the strongest records of safe and successful procedures. This has been true even though they handle an unusual number of high risk and complex cases.

1996: The Webster-Jenkins basket catheter is developed by Drs. Kathy Jenkins and James E. Lock to provide rapid diagnostic information in mapping multiple sites of cardiac arrhythmias.

1999: The FDA approves the use of CardioSEAL, a catheter-implanted device developed at Children's Hospital Boston to repair holes in the hearts of seriously ill heart patients.

2001: Interventional cardiologists at Children's Hospital Boston perform the world's first successful prenatal aortic valvuloplasty to prevent the progression of fetal aortic stenosis to hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS) in a 19-week-old fetus. Children's cardiologists threaded a cardiac catheter through the fetus's aortic valve and inflated a balloon to widen the opening.

On-going Research
  • The effectiveness of cutting balloons to treat resistant stenoses.
  • The further development of innovative catheterization treatments for the treatment of complex cardiac diseases.
  • The use of transcatheter radio-frequency ablation to treat both simple and complex arrhythmias.
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