A team of pediatric specialists led by University of Miami researcher Steven E. Lipshultz has helped solve part of a complex medical mystery that offers hope to thousands of families whose children suffer from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, the Miami Herald reports (paywall alert).
The team’s decade-long research led to the discovery that infants under a year old with certain subtypes of the disease were more at risk of dying than children who were diagnosed at an older age, according to the Miami Herald. This difference led to a “risk calculator” that will help determine whether a child is one of the 97 percent who can be treated with conventional methods or the 3 percent who will need a transplant. Currently, about 30,000 children in the United States have some form of cardiomyopathy.