Kansas City,
18
February
2019
|
17:47 PM
Europe/Amsterdam

Drs. Aly and Shirali Recognized at Cardiology 2019 Conference

Doaa Aly, MBBCH, Ward Family Heart Center Fellow, Children's Mercy Kansas City, was recognized as the Outstanding Investigator at the Cardiology 2019 conference in Huntington Beach, California. Dr. Aly was awarded this top recognition out of more than 200 abstracts submitted for the conference. Her award-winning abstract was titled: "Ability of Video Telemedicine to Predict Unplanned Hospital Readmissions for Single Ventricle Infants."

Dr. Aly’s study looks at the daily home videos used by the Cardiac High Acuity Monitoring program (CHAMP) to assess if this program could be expanded. The clinical team tested an objective video clinical scoring system to identify single ventricle infants (SVI) at risk for clinical deterioration and predict unplanned hospital readmissions (UHA). The study showed that video scoring was feasible for 91.6 percent of all observations. Interstage SVI demonstrated significantly higher scores shortly prior to admissions and this new scoring system provided 89 percent sensitivity and 97 percent specificity predicting UHA. Dr. Aly and her team recommend conducting multicenter, prospective validation of this tool.

17th Annual William J. Rashkind Memorial Lecture in Pediatric Cardiology

Girish Shirali, MBBS, FACC, FASE; Division Director, Cardiology; Melva and Randall L. O’Donnell PhD, Chair in Pediatric Cardiology and Co-Director, the Ward Family Heart Center, was also recognized as he presented the 17th Annual William J. Rashkind Memorial Lecture in Pediatric Cardiology to more than 800 conference attendees.

Dr. Shirali’s presentation “Gaps in Pediatric Cardiac Care: Opportunities to Make a Difference” focused on identifying the need for the development of CHAMP and the journey the program has taken over the past five years. This includes expanding use of the CHAMP app technology to eight other sites and recognizing a significantly improved mortality rate of 2.4 percent for all sites combined. The national average previously was between 10 and 15 percent for this high-risk patient population. Dr. Shirali also shared the future state with the audience which includes a platform agnostic version of the app, which will be launching this summer.

About Us

Children’s Mercy Kansas City is an independent, non-profit, 390-bed pediatric health system, providing over half a million patient encounters each year for children from across the country. Children’s Mercy is ranked by U.S. News & World Report in all ten specialties. We have received Magnet® recognition five times for excellence in nursing services. In affiliation with the University of Missouri-Kansas City, our faculty of nearly 800 pediatric specialists and researchers is actively involved in clinical care, pediatric research and educating the next generation of pediatricians and pediatric subspecialists. The Children’s Mercy Research Institute (CMRI) integrates research and clinical care with nationally recognized expertise in genomic medicine, precision therapeutics, population health, health care innovation and emerging infections. In 2021 the CMRI moved into a nine-story, 375,000-square-foot space emphasizing a translational approach to research in which clinicians and researchers work together to accelerate the pace of discovery that enhances care.