The Madden DeLuca Foundation has created a position and is funding The Madden DeLuca Clinical and Research Fellowship in Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care at the Edmonton Stollery Hospital. This position will start in January 2017 and there will be an emphasis on clinical and laboratory research in pediatric cardiac intensive care.

*Fellowship - a clincial fellowship is an opportunity for a physician to obtain advanced training and/or to acquire more specialized expertise not normally acquired during residency training. Clinical fellows must be recognized specialists or family physicians. 

 

Research Focus

We are pleased to announce that the main focus of the Madden DeLuca Research Fellowship will be the “Low Cardiac Output Syndrome” or LCOS. LCOS is a condition that, may be fatal, and delays and complicates the recovery of many babies, infants and children after heart surgery.  The main goal of the 1^st Madden DeLuca Fellow will be to research how LCOS happens, the long and short-term effects of LCOS and how we can treat and avoid LCOS.

Despite the success of most cardiac operations in children, there remains a pressing and unmet need to understand LCOS, how it evolves, why some babies recover spontaneously and why others may require support with mechanical heart and lung circuits called ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) or ECLS (extra corporeal life support).

The Madden DeLuca Fellow will be engaged actively in research on the early prediction and diagnosis of LCOS, novel measurements of impending cardiac collapse, the preoperative and postoperative risk factors including the thickness of the heart wall and how factors that affect heart muscle relaxation may impair recovery after surgery. In addition, the Madden DeLuca Fellow will research the effects on LCOS of mechanical ventilation, painkiller, sedative and other drugs used routinely in the pediatric cardiac intensive unit.

Quality improvement and quality assurance measurements are important after cardiac surgery and the Madden DeLuca Fellow will work towards assessing how system improvements can reduce the incidence of LCOS and improve outcomes following recovery, especially school performance many years after cardiac surgery.

Babies who suffer from LCOS usually stay longer on the PCICU. We will monitor if decreasing the number of babies who suffer from LCOS will result in reduced stays on the PCICU and in turn reduce costs and promote cost effectiveness.

Family Centered Care is central to how we practice on the PCICU and the Madden DeLuca Fellow will be investigating, not only, how LCOS complicates the outcome of babies and children after cardiac surgery, but also, the effect of LCOS on parents and siblings and how we can improve the experience of families whose children spend a prolonged time on the PCICU.

Meet The Doctor, Adil Dingankar:

The Fellow is Dr. Adil Dingankar.
He is from India and Qualified in Medicine at Maharashta University Mumbai – qualifying in 2003.
He got his National Board Pediatric Qualifications in India in 2009.
He  worked as a trainee in the Neonatal and Pediatric Intensive care Unit at K.B. Bhabha Hospital in Mumbai in 2010  and then became an Intensive Care Fellow at the Holy Family Hospital Mumabi 2010-2011.
To improve his experience he took a position as a Fellow in General Pediatrics and Neonatology at Frimley Park Hospital on the outskirts of London in the UK in 2011 for 1 year.

In 2012 he became a Clinical Fellow at the premier Children’s Hospital in London – Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, where he was trained in the PICU, NICU, Cardiac ICY and also in managing ECMO. (December 2012-February 2015). Following this he took a temporary position at the University Hospital Southampton in the Uk but is now back at Great Ormond Street for another year, and will join us from there.

He has had excellent clinical training including in the area of Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care as managed in the UK and would like to develop his academic skills and research abilities to allow him to take this skill set back to India and advance the care of children there.

Our Commitment 

Our committment is to provide $90,000.00/year to this valuable fellowhsip and we need your help. You can donate specifically to this cause by cheque, money order or through the donate page using Paypal account. Contact us by: T: 780-901-6800, Email: [email protected] or fill our our contact us form to find out more.

The Madden DeLuca Foundation is raising funds by running events such as soccer and golf tournament and silents auctions. We accept donations and have various programs and sponsrships to help raise funding for this and other programs we undertake.

Read More about the duties performed by the Fellowship position.