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Here’s an Open Report from the Children’s Hospital  Colorado about the work they are doing:

Thank you for the Jayden DeLuca Foundation’s generous support of our pulmonary hypertension (PH) program and pediatric cardiac research at Children’s Hospital Colorado’s Heart Institute.  Your 2015 pledge of $250,000 is fueling innovative research and has propelled research forward and changed how we approach the care of children with PH and other cardiac conditions.

I am honored to submit a report on the innovative work of the physician-scientists leveraging funds from the Jayden DeLuca Foundation to make discoveries and conduct research that can grow into better care and cures for children with pediatric cardiac disease. And I am pleased to share the many research papers associated with your gift, all made possible by the Jayden DeLuca Foundation. We are grateful.

The team has had 18 peer-reviewed papers funded by the Jayden DeLuca Foundation gift in 2018. A few highlights from this work include:

  1. Understanding how drugs to treat pediatric cardiac conditions like PH work on children, and a discussion of drug development and approval in drugs for children.
  2. Understanding how cardiac MRI (no radiation) can be used to evaluate children with pulmonary hypertension (Drs. Uyen Truong and Schafer.)
  3. Being able to evaluate the right heart function using three-dimensional echocardiography in the echo lab by Dr. Pei-Nei Jone.

These articles contain many more insights and share research that the Jayden DeLuca Foundation has funded. They can spread the word – throughout the nation and world – about better ways to care for children with pediatric heart conditions, improving care for all kids. The Jayden DeLuca Foundation was recognized in these papers.

The Jayden DeLuca Foundation’s gift has supported the work of Dr. Uyen Truong. As we shared last year, your investment in Dr. Truong’s research contributed to her being selected as a NIH mentored scholar award to support her research in MRI ($170,000 a year for 5 years), which means your investment has a more than ten-fold return for new research in Cardiac MRI!

In addition, Dr. Truong has been working on the following projects with your support:

  1. Truong and her lab team have been working to create a standardized exercise protocol with ergometer, testing out on a broad range of volunteers.
  2. Truong’s team has recruited 14 subjects for the MATCH-uPP sturdy (MRI and catherization hemodynamics in pediatric pulmonary hypertension), in which they are replicating the nitric oxide challenge conventionally does in the Cath Lab; but now they are doing it in the MRI scanner, which means no radiation, no sedation, and no catheter manipulation. It is therefore much less intrusive and risky for children. The team’s data is incredibly promising, showing data correlation between the MRI (less intrusive) method and the procedure done within the Cath Lab, meaning the MRI method could be as effective as the more intrusive method. This is exciting news! Dr. Truong’s team has submitted abstracts on this research to SCMR and ISSMR, two of the largest conferences in their fields, which could result in further study and this less-intrusive treatment for PH being widely adopted. These research breakthroughs result in fewer heart catherizations for our young patients, which makes parents happy.
  3. Continuing to update and refine the Mobile App created with your support; currently the team is testing the efficacy using the Apple Watch.

Your gift has also supported the work of Dr. Michael Yeager, along with his partner, Kelley Colvin, and their team.

Your gift has also given us illuminating insights into research  projects conducted by pediatric cardiologist / researcher Dale Burkett, MD, whose team accomplished the following:

  1. They were able to demonstrate that pulmonary hypertension affects both systole and diastole in the left ventricle.
  2. They were able to describe two new methods of assessing left ventricular shape by echocardiography that appear to be very good at predicting invasive hemodynamics.
  3. They were able to establish a robust data registry with cardiac catheterization data, echocardiographic data, and outcome data.

And, your investment provided support to Dr. Pei-Ni Jone, who used the funds to present her teams three-dimensional echocardiography (3D echo) research in PH at the World Congress for Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery. Dr. Jone also has had one publication on right atrial function in pulmonary hypertension in Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging last year. They also have another manuscript on 3D echo in PH that has recently been accepted at Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging this year. Her team is currently working on the PH score in echo for children with PH.

We are so grateful for your support and friendship. You are helping to make huge strides in cardiac research and with your support, Dr. Ivy and his team are able to create incredible opportunities for the treatment and management of children with PH and other cardiac conditions. You are making the future brighter, much brighter, for kids with pediatric cardiac conditions. Thank you.

Children’s Hospital Colorado 

“I wanted to thank you again for your gift. The money has already gone to good use. There was a patient from Idaho with PH that needed oxygen on the airplane and we could not get it funded, so we used Jayden’s fund to pay for it so the family could go home sooner. We have recently sent in 4 different pulmonary hypertension papers to medical journals on different aspects of PH in children.”

- Dr Dunbar Ivy,  The Children's Hospital - Denver, Colorado

“Fifty years ago we would have known her heart was the problem but have not been able to repair it. Fifteen years ago the heart/lung bypass machine was not advanced enough and would have destroyed her kidneys during her surgery. It is only today, with all our medical advancements, that my baby could be ok. The words thankful do not even begin to describe how we feel.”

- Gracen’s Mom