VOA标准英语2010年-US Doctors Create New Registry for Chi

The IMPACT registry stands for 'Improving Pediatric and Adult Congenital Treatment' and includes information about patients who do not undergo open heart surgery. Often they undergo catheterization, a procedure which uses a catheter, or narrow tube, that is threaded into the heart through a blood vessel¹.

Daniel Ryntjes | Washington 01 January 2010

A five-month-old baby born with a congenital heart defect undergoes a catheterization. The child is one of 36,000 babies born with a heart defect in the U.S. each year. Doctors are working on the infant's heart without performing open heart surgery. Cardiologists, such as Dr. Gerard Martin, say that within the last four years, doctors have learned how to perform more complex heart surgeries using catheters.

"...you can fix the heart without cuts, without invading the body, without pain," says Dr. Gerard Martin at Chlidnen's National Medical Center

But Dr. Martin says the long-term effectiveness of certain heart catheterization procedures is unclear.

So working with the American College of Cardiology, Dr. Martin is establishing a new database, known as the IMPACT registry. It records the progress of thousands of catheterization patients over the long-term.

Dr. Martin says, by monitoring the progress of multiple patients from infancy² through adulthood³, doctors can gather crucial evidence about the effectiveness of the procedures.

"...so we will know how we are really doing when we treat this condition," he adds.  "Not in 20 children in one hospital, but in 2,000 children in a hundred hospitals."

Doctors use such databases to monitor the long-term well-being⁴ of patients undergoing many kinds of treatments.

EJ Davis, 4, was only three-months-old when he underwent open heart surgery.

His physician, Dr. Richard Jonas, still gets regular progress reports on EJ and thousands of other patients from a surgical⁵ registry.

"It's not just about surviving an operation and doing well for a few days or a few weeks. It's about decades and decades," says Dr. Jonas.

EJ's mother, Hope Davis, says she believes registries will help to improve the lives of children born with heart defects in the future.

"They'll have access to even better care and even more knowledge in science that will really help," she says.  "One day maybe they'll only have to go through a few things that EJ had to go through."

Dr. Gerard Martin says the IMPACT registry for catheterization patients will help doctors to make decisions based on long-term evidence gathered from many hospitals. He says it will help future generations of patients live healthier lives.

1 vessel   

n.船舶；容器，器皿；管，导管，血管

参考例句：

• The vessel is fully loaded with cargo for Shanghai.这艘船满载货物驶往上海。
• You should put the water into a vessel.你应该把水装入容器中。

2 infancy   

n.婴儿期；幼年期；初期

参考例句：

• He came to England in his infancy.他幼年时期来到英国。
• Their research is only in its infancy.他们的研究处于初级阶段。

3 adulthood   

n.成年，成人期

参考例句：

• Some infantile actions survive into adulthood.某些婴儿期的行为一直保持到成年期。
• Few people nowadays are able to maintain friendships into adulthood.如今很少有人能将友谊维持到成年。

4 well-being   

n.安康，安乐，幸福

参考例句：

• He always has the well-being of the masses at heart.他总是把群众的疾苦挂在心上。
• My concern for their well-being was misunderstood as interference.我关心他们的幸福，却被误解为多管闲事。

5 surgical   

adj.外科的，外科医生的，手术上的

参考例句：

• He performs the surgical operations at the Red Cross Hospital.他在红十字会医院做外科手术。
• All surgical instruments must be sterilised before use.所有的外科手术器械在使用之前，必须消毒。