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Akron Webcast Spurs Florida Boy's Surgery: Parents Bring Son, 5, to Children's Hospital After Viewing Internet

Posted on: Wednesday, 10 May 2006, 09:10 CDT

By Elizabeth Suh, The Akron Beacon Journal, Ohio

May 10--Rishy and Kimberlee Rajoo watched on the Internet from West Palm Beach, Fla., in late March as Dr. John Clark performed heart-catheter surgery at Akron Children's Hospital.

The timing of the Web broadcast, or webcast, showing the prerecorded procedure was a "kind of divine intervention," Rishy Rajoo said.

One of his two sons recently had been diagnosed with the same condition as the young patient in the webcast -- tachycardia, or a sporadic, rapid heartbeat -- that could be cured with the same surgery.

As Children's Hospital had hoped, the webcast helped spur the Florida couple to bring their 5-year-old son Andre to Clark, director of Children's Arrhythmia Center, a month later.

But even if the couple hadn't come to Akron, the program still gave the two the information they needed to guide their son's treatment, Kimberlee Rajoo said.

The webcast -- Children's first -- initiated the hospital into the small, growing club of hospitals using webcasts to educate and attract patients from ever wider areas.

There have been 500 public webcasts at 75 hospitals in the United States since 1997, said Ross Joel, executive vice president of slp3D, a Connecticut company that produces most of the hospital webcasts in the country.

The number of webcasts grows by 50 percent each year, Joel said.

The audience is expanding at a faster rate. In the past 18 months, the number of viewers jumped from 1 million to 6 million.

Live broadcasts

Eighty percent of webcasts feature surgery and tend to draw the most viewers when broadcast live, he said. Usually, at least half of viewers come from outside a hospital's local area.

Children's Hospital is one of only three hospitals in Ohio that have produced webcasts, he said. The others are the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospital in Cincinnati.

Summa Health System and University Hospitals of Cleveland are planning webcasts that initially will focus on educating medical staff and communicating between physicians and staff at separate facilities, spokespeople for both health systems said.

A hospital might invest $35,000 to $45,000 in a single webcast, Joel said, but the hospital can hope to generate at least a dozen new patients in the following six months as a result.

3,600 viewers

So far, Children's Hospital's webcast, which is archived on the hospital's Web site, has generated more than 3,600 viewers and two patients -- Andre and a young patient from the Mahoning Valley, said Andrea Reynolds, the hospital's manager of Web development and public relations. Children's Hospital plans three more webcasts this year.

The main thrust of most hospital webcasts is educational, Joel said, and attracting patients is a happy byproduct.

The Cleveland Clinic has been using webcasts primarily to educate, said Jon Catanese, the hospital's director of Internet and interactive marketing, but webcasts also help present the health system's research and patient care as cutting-edge.

The Cleveland Clinic has done several webcasts since 2003, including live surgery, continuing education classes and internal webcasts for employees. In November 2005, the Clinic began producing a downloadable version of webcasts called "vodcasts" that are being tailored toward younger consumers.

The vodcasts, which are similar in format to television news broadcasts, are only several minutes long and address new information, such as study findings from the Cleveland Clinic on popular supplements, or other topics of interest such as health tips for fans attending NFL games.

By mid-March, 2,200 people had subscribed to automatically receive the vodcasts on their computer or iPod, Catanese said.

The Cleveland Clinic plans to begin releasing downloadable audio broadcasts called podcasts in the next week or two, said Glenn Bieler, the hospital's director of communications.

Andre's case

Andre Rajoo started complaining about a year ago when his heart would beat too fast.

"I just felt like I was gonna pop," Andre said during his recent Akron visit.

But his parents either didn't witness the episodes, or they happened when Andre was sick, so doctors didn't diagnose the separate heart condition.

Then, on a drive to Disney World in February, Andre's parents saw it happen.

"The whole chest was moving," his mother said. His family could almost hear his heart pounding.

Doctors in Florida diagnosed Andre's condition, and the Rajoos began researching treatment.

They asked everyone -- friends, taxi drivers, people they met on the street. Then a friend's daughter told them about the Arrhythmia Center at Akron Children's Hospital and that a webcast about their son's condition was coming up in less than two weeks.

"That (was) sign one from God that maybe we should go that way," Kimberlee Rajoo said.

Although she initially was skeptical about the webcast and whether she should view it as an infomercial, she and her husband were impressed with its substance. Doctors answered three of the five questions the Rajoos submitted by e-mail. Watching the procedure, called cryoablation, allayed their fears of it.

That impression, combined with the doctors' credentials and the endorsement of those credentials by prestigious doctors the family contacted in France, where two of Andre's grandparents live part-time, made Akron Children's Hospital the Rajoos' obvious choice.

So last Thursday, Dr. Clark threaded catheters into Andre's heart and froze off the malfunctioning part with nitrous oxide sent down a catheter.

Hardly an hour later, Andre sat in his hospital bed happily watching cartoons and surrounded by family, including his 3-year-old brother Arrun, both sets of grandparents and his great-grandmother.

The Rajoos traveled a long, difficult road to get to Akron, said Kimberlee Rajoo, but she was glad they persevered to find the best doctors for her son.

The webcast opened that door, Rishy Rajoo said.

Now, Andre will be running around, getting on rides and going to water parks just like he did before.

Elizabeth Suh can be reached at 330-996-3748 or esuh@thebeaconjournal.com.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Akron Beacon Journal, Ohio

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Source: Akron Beacon Journal (Akron, Ohio)

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