This is a first in Europe: thanks to the use of a new 3D visualization software called EchoNavigator, the medical team of the children's center of the Toulouse University Hospital has successfully completed three pediatric closed heart operations.
The EchoNavigator technology aims to facilitate surgical operations by percutaneous route, either, passing through a vein and therefore without having to open the patient's body to intervene. The system is intended to be particularly suitable for cases of patients with malformations or a state of health that does not allow open operations.
By going directly through the veins to operate, we limit the risk of infection, complications and the operation time is also reduced, as is the recovery period.
To allow this type of operation, the system relies on 3D. On a screen, the ultrasound of the patient's heart is displayed alongside the live visualization of the latter by X-rays. It then becomes possible for the surgeon to make the modifications by visualizing the patient's organ as during a open heart surgery.
Within two years, around forty children suffering from heart defects should benefit from this type of operation which leaves no scar and allows recovery in record time and only 72 hours of hospitalization.
