“We have over 800 video images in this particular collection of every possible permutation of fetal cardiovascular disease.” – Jack Rychik, MD
I always found cardiology to be the most fascinating of the different subjects in medical school. To me, it was perhaps one of the most challenging subjects. As I applied myself to understanding the different variations in the way the heart can be built from a congenital standpoint, it began to make sense and was extremely gratifying.
My co-editor, Zhiyun Tian, and I have been at the Fetal Heart Program at the Cardiac Center for over 10 years. In our experiences at Children’s Hospital, we have had hundreds of different cases with perhaps every single possible permutation of congenital heart disease. As we continue forward, there still are many more differences in how the heart can be built. It was simply a matter of looking at our collection in our library and realizing that we had a huge number of fascinating cases that we needed to share with the community at large. That’s what prompted us to begin thinking about putting together Fetal Cardiovascular Imaging, and its accompanying videos.
Fetal Cardiovascular Imaging appeals to pediatric cardiologists, obstetricians and maternal fetal medicine specialists who deal with diagnosis of pregnant women who are carrying fetuses with birth defects, and radiologists who specialize in prenatal imaging. Pediatric surgeons who repair congenital heart disease will also have an interest, because many patients now are detected before birth with complex heart disease.
As we were thinking about putting an educational product together it became clear to us that in the current era, providing simple still frames, even high-quality still frames of echo images, was not going to be sufficient in conveying the information and data that we wanted to convey. So, we began to catalogue our videos. In essence, one makes the diagnosis of congenital heart disease by looking at moving images. We have over 800 video images in this particular collection of every possible permutation of fetal cardiovascular disease.
Renowned for his research and clinical practice in fetal heart disease, Jack Rychik, MD, FACC, holds the Robert S. Harrington Endowed Chair of Pediatric Cardiology and is the Director of the Fetal Heart Program and the Single Ventricle Survivorship Program at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He has published extensively in the field, with more than 250 peer-reviewed research publications, medical books, reviews, chapters and abstracts on fetal and pediatric cardiac disorders and treatment.
Regarded as a leader in the field, Dr. Rychik presents and lectures around the world at conferences on complex cardiovascular disease in both fetal and pediatric patients. He served as chair of the Task Force on Training and Standards in Fetal Echocardiography for the American Society of Echocardiography and wrote the policy statement for clinical competence in echocardiography for the AHA and ACC. He is a reviewer for every leading cardiology journal including the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, the Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography, and the New England Journal of Medicine.
