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CARDIOLOGY AND HEART SURGERY
Innovation is at the ‘heart’ of the exceptional health care we provide for babies and their families, even while the baby is still in the womb.
The SSM Health Cardinal Glennon fetal heart team at the St. Louis Fetal Care Institute uses state-of-the-art technology to detect heart defects as early as 18 weeks of gestation. The generosity of donors supports such innovation as specialized fetal MRI, leading to our center’s ranking of #1 in Missouri.
A fetal MRI scan is a non-invasive procedure that makes high-resolution images to show heart defects not visible on prenatal ultrasounds. The fetal MRI monitor detects the cardiac motion of the fetal heartbeat and synchronizes the fetal cardiac cycle with the MRI so that the imaging is both anatomical and functional. This innovative tool gives our cardiologists and cardiothoracic surgeons the best quality imaging, improving clinical decision-making, care planning, and family counseling.
Donor funding also made the following investments possible:
• Portable echocardiogram machine
• New EKG machines
• 4D echocardiogram machine
• Innovative contrast delivery system
• Metabolic stress equipment
