Minutes of ASE Pediatric and Congenital Heart Disease (PCHD ...

Minutes of ASE Council on Pediatric and Congenital Heart Disease Conference Call
Thursday, December 2, 2010
The call was brought to order by Chairman Wyman Lai, MD at 12 noon EST. Members in attendance were
Drs. Benjamin Eidem, Peter Frommelt, Leo Lopez, Mark Lewin, William Border, Meryl Cohen, Andrew
Powell, Carrie Altman, Luc Mertens, and Richard Williams; and Sonographer Representative Helen Ko.
Cathy Kerr, CAE staffed the call.
1. Quantitative writing group update: Dr. Lopez reported that a project proposal for universal Z
scores is being developed and will need funding (estimated at approximately $1.5M). The holdup
on the project is the statistical justification for the number of patients needed. The proposal will
be shared with the Council Board, and then sent to ASE leadership for approval. NIH will be
approached for funding. The proposal will include M-mode, Doppler and 2D; NIH may be asked
for direction regarding inclusion of 3D.
ACTION ITEM: Drs. Lopez and Lai to finalize proposal and send out to Council Board members for
review in December.
2. Echo in the NICU guideline: Dr. Mertens said that a final version will be circulated to council
board members within the next few weeks. The document has three parts: TNE, including
indications and protocol aspects; conditions; and training/accreditation. Once the council
approves, this will go to the Guidelines and Standards Committee and board. It may then be
shared with other organizations that may wish to sign on to it.
ACTION ITEM: Dr. Mertens and Lai to finalize and send out a draft for Council Board members to
review in December. The approved version will be sent to the Guidelines & Standards Committee
for approval. Following that, the guidelines will be forwarded to the collaborating European
societies and AAP for review, and then to the ASE Board (preferably before the March 17-18
Board Retreat).
3. Multimodality protocols: Dr. Lai led a discussion regarding “lumping” or “splitting” the guideline
topics. An earlier bottleneck had occurred at the formation of the TOF writing group due to slow
interactions with SCMR. The Council Board decided to keep the TOF and TGA topics separate,
with a new strategy of drawing writing group members solely from the ASE.
ACTION ITEM(S): Dr Anne Marie Valente and Dr. Tal Geva will continue working on the writing
group on TOF. Dr. Eidem will head a writing group on TGA. A third document on single ventricle
will be kept on hold for now.
4. PCHD Committee on Laboratory Organization and Productivity: the goal is to gather data on the
number of echos performed, staffing, number of machines, how physician time is organized, etc.
Dr. Lai distributed a document, which is attached.
ACTION ITEM: Council Board members will review the survey and send suggestions to Dr. Lai in
the next two weeks. Drs. Vivek Allada, Lai, Frommelt, and Cohen will produce a new version
incorporating suggestions that will be filled out by the Council Board members as a means of
testing the survey. Once finalized, the survey will be sent out to academic pediatric echo lab
directors.
5. Committee reports: council representatives to ASE committees have received an e-mail from
Cathy Kerr asking for their interest in continuing and their assessment of the possibility of
attaining a leadership position on their committees. Members who have not yet done so were
asked to send this information to her.