Xinhua Hospital wins national award for child congenital heart treatmant

Bringing hope for children with congenital heart disease, Xinhua Hospital's self-developed diagnosis and treatment technology and system was honored with a National Science and Technology Award announced on Monday.

Congenital heart disease is the major cause of death for children under the age of five. Xinhua Hospital has been a leader in exploring new technology, setting up new guidelines, and promoting training nationwide. It has changed diagnoses and treatments from being invasive to non-invasive, achieved minimally invasive treatment on critical children, and moved medical detection and intervention on congenital heart disease from young children to newborns and even fetuses.

"A total of three generations of Xinhua's medical teams on pediatric cardiovascular department have been involved in the work, moving congenital heart disease from being seen to being cured," said Dr Sun Kun, president of Xinhua Hospital. "We have also created and promoted standardization of the clinical practice to boost China's abilities on treating child congenital heart disease.

Ti Gong

In the 1980s, diagnosis of congenital heart disease in China could only be conducted through invasive and radioactive measures. In order to reduce harm to children, Xinhua Hospital developed a special ultrasound diagnostic method to offer precise but non-invasive diagnosis to guide follow-up surgery. Since then, the rate of invasive diagnoses in China dropped from 90 percent to 5 percent.

Along with the perfection and further development of technology, the hospital is able to improve the precise diagnosis rate for complicated congenital heart disease from 74.8 percent to 90.5 percent.

The hospital has been involved in minimally invasive technology development and has developed 10 new technologies and some medical equipment specially for children to reduce damage due to the treatment and long-term complications.

"We started to try 3D printing as early as 2000, when it was a completely new concept. We looked for usable materials by ourselves to do the printing to make absorbable equipment for children," Sun said.

In addition to treating young children born with congenital heart disease, the hospital is moving their work to newborn babies and fetuses to allow super-early intervention and intrauterine treatment to bring hope for babies, who can have poor treatment outcomes when being delivered or face the risk of death in the womb.

The hospital's guidelines and experience have been promoted to 313 hospitals throughout China, and their minimally invasive surgeries on children with congenital heart disease increased from 1,020 in 2002 to 37,496 in 2021, with a 98.3 percent success rate. These practices greatly improve the cure rate of Chinese children's congenital heart disease, improve patients' life quality, and showcase China's medical capability.

"We are glad to be involved in children's treatment," Sun said. "Children only account for 20 percent of the total population but they are 100 percent of our future."

Ti Gong