Ore. - Anne Lingle flew all the way from Alaska to be one of the first two patients to participate in a new study at Oregon Health Sciences University . But a new study at OHSU's School of Medicine and Doernbecher Children's Hospital is looking at the effectiveness of a new device that can close the hole without surgery and only requires a 24-hour hospital stay, allowing patients to resume normal activity soon after discharge. It looks like two small umbrellas facing each other and is made of polyester fabric attached to metal that can be implanted in the body during cardiac catheterization. A catheter, with the device inside, is gently inserted into a vein in the patient's leg, then routed into the heart. Once in the heart, the device is pushed out of the catheter where it opens on each side of the hole to cover and close it.
New tissue grows over the fabric of the device, closing the hole permanently.
The hole in her heart was discovered more than a year and a half ago, but she didn't want to have open-heart surgery, so she waited for the opportunity to participate in this study. I didn't want to spend days in a hospital recuperating from surgery because my family is in Alaska, and without their support it would've been really difficult for me. ASD is most frequently found in children during early childhood. Then it is diagnosed using an echocardiogram that shows a hole in the wall, or septum, between the two upper chambers, or atria, of the heart. The defect causes blood to recirculate through the lungs unnecessarily.