Let Technology Be Your Guide
High-tech tools used at Children’s Hospital guide doctors
in seeing what’s wrong with a child, and make it easier to fix

Imagine you are 7 years old. Your tummy hurts and you have to go to the hospital to find out why and get it fixed. Now imagine you have a choice: a big surgery and being in the hospital for days, or a little cut, back home that day, followed later by a small surgery. Which would you choose?

Technology and skills at Children’s makes that choice possible. Interventional radiology (IR) “takes pictures” of the inside of a body. This includes the use of X-rays, ultrasound and CT scans. These pictures are used by the IR doctors to guide diagnosis or treatment of certain problems, using only small needles, tubes (called catheters), balloons and metal stents, placed through tiny incisions in the skin.

IR has been around since the mid-1970s for adults and has been used with success for procedures that, today, are common, such as coronary angiography. Angiography uses X-rays and dyes to see and treat blockages and other blood vessel problems in the body and brain.

Children’s is one of only a few pediatric centers in the country that offers this type of treatment to children. Dennis Shaw, MD, division head, Vascular/Interventional Radiology, and Manrita Sidhu, MD, interventional radiologist, are the IR physicians at Children’s. Joe Eskridge, MD, division head Neurointerventional Radiology, University of Washington, completes the team.

Dr. Sidhu says that IR has very good outcomes in children because it is less invasive, and involves fewer in-hospital days and less time to heal. It can help find some problems, and can replace some types of surgeries or make them easier, she says. “We help get the child to a physical state where surgery can be performed more successfully. For instance, sometimes a child shows up at the emergency room after the appendix has already ruptured,” she says. “This means that there’s lots of infected fluid in the abdomen, which makes it harder to operate. Using the pictures we see on ultrasound and a tiny needle, we can place a tube through the child’s skin that drains the fluid. Then, once the child’s infection has healed, the surgeon can remove the appendix more easily and, all in all, have a better outcome.”

IR also can have a huge impact in the lives of children who are restricted by their illnesses, such as those who need feeding tubes or have trouble with other daily functions. Some children with spina bifida, for instance, can’t control their bowels. Guided by ultrasound and X-ray, doctors place a tube into the colon so the child can use the bathroom and avoid embarrassing accidents.

A further value of IR is to diagnose and treat bleeding in the brain. In the new angiography lab, specialists can see a three-dimensional picture of the blood vessels of the brain to find and treat tumors, deliver medicine or unblock blood flow. “The best part about our new lab is that we can treat our kids here where we have the staff, training and tools just for kids,” says Dr. Sidhu. The before and after care, the dosage, even the size of the equipment are geared toward children.

Treating children is not like treating adults because their organs are smaller, the diseases are different, and their blood vessels are prone to spasm, notes Dr. Sidhu. The side effects of IR are like those one might have after traditional surgery but not as severe. This can include infection or bleeding and side effects of sedation.

“IR is a very rewarding area to work in because we can help patients and help other doctors in making the treatment the best it can be,” says Dr. Shaw. “We’ve been building this program for close to a decade. And now we are able to provide IR as the latest in diagnosis and treatment options for our patients and their families.”