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Heart Screens for Teens

Same day as physicals - April 18th



Heart Screens for Teens will be returning to Blessed Trinity on Wednesday, April 18th, beginning at 3:00 pm. Cost for the screening is $65.00. To schedule your student (ages 10-18), please contact heartscreens@btcatholic.org.

 

Prior to the screening please download and complete the registration form.


Bazemore’s Frequently Asked Questions About Heart Screen For Teens:

Q: What exactly is Heart Screens? What does it do?

A: Heart Screens for Teens is a program started by UltraScan, Inc.  Ultrascan is the Southeast’s largest provider of mobile ultrasound services.  They service over 150 hospitals, clinics and physician offices throughout Georgia, including Northside Hospital, Tanner Medical Center, and Ty Cobb Healthcare.  Ultrascan is also the exclusive provider of Echocardiogram and Nuclear Medicine Services to the Emory Clinic.  During the wake of several recent sudden cardiac deaths in Georgia high schools, including Ryan Boslet - a football player at Chattahoochee HS - Ultrascan developed the Heart Screens for Teens program.  The majority of students who succumbed to Sudden Cardiac Death had an undetected heart condition known as Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM), or an enlarged heart. The best and most effective way to detect an enlarged heart is through an echocardiogram. 

Most of the Ultrascan machines sit idle on the weekends.  The Heart Screens for Teens program is only offered on Saturdays.  By taking advantage of these idle resources, the Heart Screens for Teens program can use the same machines and technologists that are working during the week at Georgia’s finest medical establishments.   To cover the cost of the board certified pediatric cardiologist who reads the echocardiogram and the technologist who performs the exam, the company only charges $65. The average cost for an echocardiogram can be $900 to $1500 - most of the time not covered by insurance. UltraScan is donating the use of the machines and is taking a loss in the process.  The company is also contributing $8 of the $65 to a research fund dedicated to investigating the results of these studies.

Q: Why did you decide to bring the program to BT?

A: As an Athletic Trainer my goal is to prevent injuries. Providing the echocardiogram is the best way to rule out the worse case for our students. We have a diverse population of students with a variety of backgrounds and family histories. The student/parent medical history questionnaire is about 70% effective to rule out most conditions that may affect our students. Having an echocardiogram gets us closer to the most efficient means of detecting potentially harmfully underlying conditions.

Q: I understand that there was a BT student who was detected with a problem while having the echocardiogram? What exactly did they find? What's her condition now?

A: In 2004, one of 143 students checked was found to have a hole in her heart. The hole was between two chambers of the heart known as the atriums. The atriums receive blood back to the heart. The right atrium receives the oxygen depleted blood from the body and the left atrium receives oxygen rich blood returning from the lungs. The hole is naturally occurring in developing babies but should close during development. Hers did not. She was initially told that the hole was about 5mm in size. However, a repeated echo showed the largest part of the hole to be 17mm in size. Her surgery, known as a PFO closure, is a minimally invasive procedure that runs a catheter to the heart through a vien in the leg. A device is then implanted through the hole and attached to close the hole. She is fine today.

Q: When you instituted the program, did you think you'd find anything serious or did you think that it was more of precautionary measure?

A: I never thought that we would find anything.  Statistically, for a school our size the chance of finding HCM or having a sudden cardiac death is about one every 300 years.  However, it is the one that is found that makes this program worth while.

Q: What types of diseases does the screening detect?

A: Primarily we are looking for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). Of over 5000 studies done through Heart Screens only 23 hearts (including the BT student’s) have been found to have an abnormality. None have been found with HCM. The abnormalities found include PFO (Patent Foramen Ovale), MVP (Mitral Valve Prolapse), ASD (Atrial Septal Defect), AI ( Aortic Insufficiency), VSD (Ventricular Septal Defect), and BAV (Bi-cuspid Aortic Valve).