Grant Recipient: Robert Campbell, MD
- Institution:
- LUTHSCSA, San Antonio, TX
- Presentations & Publications:
- Heune Memorial Award was an extremely important early source of support for our work on Dynamic Lung MRI study of Chest and Spine biomechanics as the basis for respiration. This research effort has enabled us, for the first time, to understand how scoliosis and chest wall disease in children disables the ability of the chest wall to expand the lung during respiration, and, in a recent development, we have also discovered in many of these diseases there is also a disability of the diaphragm muscle during breathing. This explains why children die from severe scoliosis and may be the key to help us pioneer new treatments for this disease. Over the past 6 years, this technique has continued to be refined, and in recent discussions with the Center for Devices and Radiologic Health of the Food and Drug Administration, it is felt that this image technique, when analyzed by advanced computer techniques, has the potential to become a new outcome measure for assessment of new innovative pediatric devices for spine and chest wall deformity. A TRO1 grant application to the National Institute of Health (NIH) has recently been filed for a study of normal children with dynamic lung MRI, with the goal of using this data to better interpret the dynamic lung MRI test of children with thoracic insufficiency syndrome (TIS) from chest and spine disease. We owe a great debt to the St. Giles Foundation for their generous award, which essentially initiated this increasingly important work through their support.
