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2013

James T. Willerson, MD
Feb 2013   Heart and vascular disease (or cardiovascular disease, CVD) are the leading causes of death and disability in the world, despite a large proportion of it being preventable. In the US alone, 82.6 million Americans have some form of CVD. Someone dies from CVD every 33 seconds. More than 40,000 children are born each year with a congenital heart defect.
Sisters by Heart care pack
Feb 2013   Hearing those words from a doctor's mouth is completely devastating and immobilizing, often spurring the feelings of hopelessness, anxiety, fear and helplessness. Those words are spoken far too often. Every 15 minutes, a child is born with a congenital heart defect (1).   Despite the prevalence of congenital heart defects, public awareness and funding for research remains dismal. With a lack of resources and research, parents facing new diagnoses are often left in the dark, with little hope from even the medical community at large. In December of 2010, ten women came together to change that stigma - to offer hope in the midst of darkness.
collection kit used by MD Anderson Public Cord Blood Bank
Feb 2013   Many parents elect to save their newborn infant's umbilical cord blood in either a public cord blood bank that accepts free donations or a family cord blood bank that charges for private storage. Typically the first step towards banking cord blood is when the mother receives a collection kit that she must safeguard and have ready at the time of birth. This article explains the contents of collection kits and gives parents advice on how to keep them safe.