Children’s Doctor News and Updates: Fall 2017

New chiefs for cardiology, cellular therapy and transplant

Joseph Rossano, MD, MS, FAAP, FACC, became the new Chief of the Division of Cardiology in May. Rossano completed his residency in pediatrics at the Seattle Children’s Hospital and fellowships in cardiology, heart failure, and cardiac intensive care at Texas Children’s Hospital. Following his training, he was a member of the faculty at Baylor College of Medicine for several years before joining CHOP in 2011.

In June, Stephan Grupp, MD, PhD, assumed the position of Chief of the newly created Section of Cellular Therapy and Transplant in the Division of Oncology. Grupp retains his other leadership roles: Director of the Cancer Immunotherapy Program, Director of Translational Research for the Center for Childhood Cancer Research and Medical Director of the Stem Cell Laboratory. He trained at Harvard, Boston Children’s and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and came to CHOP in 1996. Grupp has researched and led groundbreaking clinical trials of an innovative T-cell therapy for children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), which was recently granted Food and Drug Administration approval.

CHOP study shows benefit of two-step tool to detect sepsis; fuels new program

In recognition that early and accurate diagnosis of sepsis is essential but challenging, physicians at CHOP created a two-step sepsis trigger tool —  an electronic alert combined with a “sepsis huddle,” in which a pediatric emergency medicine physician and nurse evaluate the child at the bedside — that a research study found increased emergency department (ED) sepsis detection from 83% to 96%.

Lead author Fran Balamuth, MD, PhD, an emergency medicine physician at CHOP, and colleagues published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine their quality improvement study, which involved the review of electronic health records of 182 509 ED visits.

This single-center quality improvement study helped to form the foundation for CHOP’s new multidisciplinary Pediatric Sepsis Program, which recently launched under the co-directorship of Balamuth and critical care colleagues Scott Weiss, MD, MSCE, and Julie Fitzgerald, MD, PhD. This program will support ongoing efforts in sepsis research, clinical care, quality improvement, and developing follow-up programs for sepsis survivors.

New center to put the positive in teen-parent relationships

Children’s Hospital recently launched the Center for Parent and Teen Communication (CPTC), a research and translation center within the Craig-Dalsimer Division of Adolescent Medicine. CPTC, led by Division Chief Carol Ford, MD, and Ken Ginsberg, MD, has 3 broad goals:

1. To reframe expectations surrounding adolescence from a negative to positive lens
2. To translate and disseminate the best of knowledge about effective parenting strategies and research in character development
3. To explore how to best leverage healthcare visits in order to support parents and youth to optimize strength-based communication

Ford will direct the Research Core, conducting primary parent-teen research in clinical settings, while Ginsburg will direct the Translation and Dissemination Core, translating research into practical information that will be disseminated widely, including through a comprehensive website (set to launch late 2017) and across social media.

Latest videos from CHOP include details on development of artificial womb

The publication of research from Alan W. Flake, MD, and colleagues on preclinical studies of their extra-uterine support device in Nature Communications has garnered worldwide attention and been featured in hundreds of media reports. Learn about it in this new video.

Other videos to view and share with appropriate families include an explanation of leukodystrophies and personal stories of teens who’ve participated in the Violence Intervention Program.

ECMO Center awarded highest honor by ELSO

CHOP’s ECMO Center received the “Platinum Level ELSO Award for Excellence in Life Support” from the Extracorporeal Life Support Organization (ELSO), an international consortium of centers offering ECMO for support of failing organ systems in infants, children, and adults. The highest awarded honor, Platinum Level, is rarely achieved, especially by pediatric centers. The ECMO Center at CHOP is the only one in the Philadelphia region designated as a Platinum Center of Excellence, and is one of the most active in the country. It has supported more than 1300 patients since it was established in 1990.