720-777-0123
Kelly Wolfe, PhD, a neuropsychologist who studies heart disease, received a grant to assess how various treatments for ductal-dependent pulmonary blood flow impact children’s brain development. She is comparing two interventions: the use of a transcatheter ductal arterial stent and a surgical systemic-to-pulmonary artery shunt. This new study, which is co-investigated by Jesse Davidson, MD, will include patients from 20 children’s hospitals through the Pediatric Heart Network's COMPASS trial, which compares medical morbidities associated with these treatments.
Researchers will assess various preprocedural risk factors such as medical, sociodemographic and genetic factors. Perioperatively, they will examine biomarkers of neural injury to evaluate differences by intervention approach and analyze their predictive utility for neurodevelopmental outcomes. Investigators will also assess targeted biomarkers of neural development both perioperatively and at 36 months to determine their relationship to long-term neurodevelopment.
