Thanks to EU funds, a specialist unit has been established in the capital of Lower Silesia to help treat cardiac defects in children and “young adults”. It offers not only a chance of survival, but also of regaining health and living a normal life in the future. Every year in Poland, more than three thousand young patients need this type of treatment.
The Unit for Transcatheter Diagnosis and Therapy of Heart Defects in Children—that is what is being referred to—has expanded the medical facilities of the hospital on Kamieńskiego Street. It has existed for only a few months, yet more than a hundred children have already received medical assistance there.
Helping children from all over Poland
“Now, in comfortable conditions, we perform the most complex procedures on young patients who require modern forms of treatment for cardiac defects,” says Prof. Jacek Kusa, head of the Department of Paediatric Cardiology. “Children come to us not only from Lower Silesia and the neighbouring provinces of Greater Poland, Opole and Silesia, but also from Masuria, Pomerania, Podlasie, Subcarpathia, Lesser Poland and Warsaw.
Children no longer have to wait to use diagnostic equipment in the adult cardiology department. The new procedure unit also treats so-called “young adults” with congenital heart defects. This is very important because this group of patients has difficulty continuing treatment due to the lack of a developed network of facilities providing an appropriate level of care—they are too old for paediatric cardiology and too young for facilities treating mature adults, whose heart diseases have different underlying causes.
A new unit, greater treatment comfort
The main aim of establishing the new unit was to raise the standard of medical services and increase access to services provided by the Provincial Specialist Hospital in Wrocław. Creating the modern unit cost just under PLN 8.5 million, with more than PLN 7 million contributed by the European Union. The most important tasks were adapting 200 sq m of space on the ground floor of the hospital for its new purpose and equipping the emerging facility with medical equipment.
“Our centre urgently needed access to a modern unit. For many years, we have worked closely with numerous specialist hospitals, such as Bambino Gesu in Rome and Stanford in the USA, as well as facilities in Geneva and Linz. It has become standard for these facilities to refer patients to us after complex forms of cardiac surgery for further transcatheter treatment,” explains Prof. Jacek Kusa. Treating children with congenital heart defects requires special conditions, above all the performance of biplane angiocardiography.
Access to it has not only made doctors’ work easier, but above all expanded diagnostic and therapeutic capabilities while reducing the need for contrast media. It is worth remembering that the Department of Paediatric Cardiology at the Provincial Specialist Hospital in Wrocław is the region’s only full-profile referral centre, providing highly specialised cardiac care to young patients.
Information material from the Marshal’s Office of the Lower Silesian Voivodeship
