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Releases Packard
Children's News
Children's Fund
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A Growing Operation:
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| Surgeon Craig Albanese, M.D., (front), a specialist in minimal access surgery, uses high tech instruments and computer imaging to make tiny incisions during complex procedures. |
Thomas Krummel, M.D., the Susan B. Ford Surgeon in Chief at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, knows that small details such as ceiling art can make a big difference in how young patients feel. Yet his ideas for improving Packard's surgical programs and facilities go way beyond that.
Helped by gifts to the Campaign for Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, Krummel and his staff currently are finalizing plans for six new pediatric operating rooms that will be equipped with the very latest in high-tech pediatric surgical equipment.
On the staffing side, the Hospital has nearly doubled the number of surgical specialists at Packard in recent years to include world-class experts in cardiac surgery, organ transplantation, plastic surgery, and surgery of the ear, nose, and throat.
Packard surgeons also are working with Stanford scientists on a unique Children's Surgical Research Program, which someday may be able to grow soft tissue and bone for grafts and other surgical repairs right in the lab.
More pediatric surgical cases mean more income – a trend that bodes well for Packard's bottom line and its ability to offer ever-better patient care. Yet Krummel thinks the children’s hospital can make even greater progress in this area, particularly if it can secure funding for better surgical facilities and endowed chairs in every surgical specialty. "Do I think our kids get good surgical care now? Yes," Krummel says firmly. "Do I think we can do better? Yes." The idea, he says, is not to remake Packard Children's Hospital into something different. "It's to improve or perfect what we’re doing now."
Perhaps no area at Packard exemplifies this recent progress more than cardiac surgery. Two and a half years ago, the Hospital recruited Frank Hanley, M.D., and V. Mohan Reddy, M.D., two preeminent surgeons from the University of California-San Francisco, to develop a new Children's Heart Center. Since then, Packard arguably has become the most respected place for pediatric cardiac care in the country. Members of the Children’s Heart Center team are experts in the diagnosis and treatment of children with heart disease, as well as babies with congenital heart problems, a condition that affects nearly 1 percent, or about 32,000 newborns each year in the United States.
Krummel also is quite proud of recent advances Packard has made in the
area of minimal access surgery. Under the leadership of Craig Albanese,
M.D., another world-class recruit from UC-San Francisco who now serves
as chief of pediatric surgery, Packard physicians are diagnosing and treating
kids with a variety of ailments, using thin fiber-optic scopes and slender
instruments rather than traditional invasive techniques. Last year, Packard
acquired a $1 million da Vinci robotic device to help with these operations,
one of only 10 pediatric medical centers in the nation to be so blessed.
Unfortunately, Krummel notes, even high-tech surgical techniques have their limitations. One of the biggest challenges for pediatric surgeons is that because children have such small bodies, it's hard to find enough extra tissue on them for procedures like bone and skin grafts. That's where the new Children's Surgical Research Program comes into play. Working together under the direction of Michael Longaker, M.D., FACS, Stanford developmental biologists, chemists, physicists, surgeons, and engineers are investigating ways to grow new cells and tissues right in the laboratory. Eventually, surgeons hope to be able to use these to enhance or replace damaged body parts.
On the facilities side, plans are sailing ahead for Packard's new, six-room pediatric operating suite. Construction is set to begin soon within existing shell space on the Hospital's ground floor, near the cafeteria. In Krummel's opinion, the project is long overdue. "Every major children's hospital in the country has its own operating rooms," he explains. Yet when Packard was built in 1991, surgical facilities weren't part of the plan – the volume of pediatric surgical cases back then wasn't high enough to justify them. So now, whenever a child needs surgery, the small patient must be wheeled down a dizzying maze of corridors to one of 21 adult operating rooms at Stanford Hospital next door.
In addition to being disorienting for the child, the shared arrangement sometimes leads to scheduling headaches. "Just this past weekend was a good example," Krummel recalls. "On Sunday, I had two children to do and there were three adult cases going; so I was in limbo." When an adult operating room finally did become available, his staff quickly had to re-outfit it with tiny instruments and anesthesia suitable for his small patient. "We do a pretty darn good job," Krummel says of the shared setup with Stanford, "but inevitably, children's needs are competing with adult needs."
Packard's new operating rooms, in contrast, will be dedicated around the clock, seven days a week, to children's cases alone. All will have state-of-the-art, overhead boom technology, allowing the surgeon to pull down equipment when it's needed and then swing it neatly out of the way when it's not. Ceiling-mounted cameras will give medical students and other onlookers a close-up view of the action, whether they're sitting in the next room or a continent away. In addition, four of the six ORs will measure a generous 650 square feet, a real plus at a teaching hospital where operating rooms sometimes can get crowded.
Blueprints for the three-year project also include plans for a cheerful six-room pre-operative area where children can play while they await surgery; a post-anesthesia care unit where children may remain under observation after surgery; a new intake/registration area, and a comfortably furnished waiting room where families can gather while their children are being treated. Project manager Jill Sullivan is particularly keen to have an outdoor play area, so that antsy young siblings can have a place to run off steam.
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