Babies born with broken hearts

A collaboration of medicine and engineering in Indiana explores cardiac flow hydrodynamics in fetal single ventricle hearts.

Researchers are studying how irregular filling mechanisms—the process of blood filling the lower two halves of the heart—may contribute to defects in developing foetal hearts.

Inefficient filling leads to energy losses that alter the heart’s structure and performance.

Tens of thousands of babies are born with life-threatening congenital heart defects every year.

Defects to single ventricles—the lower two halves of the heart—can be identified with echocardiograms.

Surgery in the first months of life can correct these defect, but about one in four of babies with the problem will not make it through the first surgery.

Mark Payne, a paediatric cardiologist at Indiana University’s School of Medicine, his colleague Pavlos Vlachos and researcher Brett Meyers from the School of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University are exploring how filling mechanics and flow structure change over the course of gestation.

“Existing tools to monitor heart defects have been designed for larger, slower, more regular adult hearts. They do not work as well on smaller, faster, irregular hearts,” said Vlachos.

Babies born with single ventricle hearts undergo a series of surgeries. “Depending on the defect, only 50 to 75 percent of children make it to the third surgery at 3 years of age,” said Payne.

“Children are left with one ventricle to carry them through life and after 18-25 years the single ventricle may fail, and it’s still not clear why.”

By looking at flow patterns in the foetal heart, Payne and his team are optimistic in furthering the field of heart failure in children.

“Fetal ultrasounds have been performed for years, but we have never looked at how flow patterns affect outcome,” said Vlachos.