With effect from Jan 2008, Towergate Charitable
Foundation will be supporting Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH),
the UK's leading and best-loved children's hospital.
Every year more than 150,000 patient visits are made to GOSH
from children all over the world. Many of the children treated
suffer from rare, complex and often life threatening conditions
which are why GOSH continually have to research, develop and
pioneer new treatments and procedures in order to meet this
continuing challenge.
One such pioneering treatment is professor Bonheoffer's
non-surgical valve replacement technique.
In 2000, Professor Philipp Bonhoeffer developed a ground
breaking way of replacing a heart valve in children using a
sophisticated non-surgical procedure. Prior to this development
children had to undergo repeated open heart surgery, often meaning
a minimum two week recovery in hospital and leaving them with
significant scarring and a heightened risk of infection.
Children can now have a valve implanted in the pulmonary artery
without opening the chest. Professor Bonhoeffer's one-hour
procedure simply uses a catheter (long thin tube) inserted through
the leg to guide the valve gently through the heart and into the
pulmonary artery. As this non-invasive technique bypasses the need
to open the chest, the child can leave hospital within 24 hours and
avoid the need to be on Intensive Care.
Professor Bonhoeffer has carried out over 150 procedures to date.
Great Ormond Street Hospital is at the centre of this pioneering
technique and until recently was the only centre to perform the
procedure. Professor Bonhoeffer and the hospital are now working
with other centres worldwide so that many more children can
benefit, by training international colleagues to carry out the
valve replacement.
Throughout the year, Towergate will be raising vital funds for two
isolation rooms in GOSH's cardiac unit. These will be used for
children who have undergone major heart and lung surgery, thus
supporting the great work of surgeons such as Professor Bonhoeffer.
With your help we can continue to help more children with heart
problems recover from such treatments and procedures.
Clair Noctor, Clinical Nurse Specialist at the Cardiac
Intensive Care Unit told us:
"The cardiac intensive care unit's isolation rooms are used to
nurse children who are at high risk of infection - for example
children who have had a heart or lung transplant, or for children
that have or may have an infection - such as Chickenpox or MRSA
- and are therefore at risk of passing it onto other
children.
Any child who needs to be looked after on an Intensive Care Unit
is vulnerable to infection. The Isolation rooms help to minimise
risk. Isolation rooms are an integral to our patients'
treatments and without them, some of our most vulnerable children
would not survive".
