Ben Wald, a 16-year-old from England, has devised a method to help doctors save lives. Working with his father, who is a cardiologist, or heart doctor, the teen came up with a way to alert surgeons to the location of previous heart surgeries in heart attack victims.
Doctors need to know a patient’s medical history so they can offer the best treatment. But in emergencies, there’s often little time to discuss these details. Many people with heart problems have received a heart bypass. During this procedure, surgeons graft, or transplant, blood vessels from another part of the body to the heart to repair or go around damaged tissues.
Ben realized that the wires used to close a patient’s ribs after bypass surgery could be shaped to form a code. The wires indicate the location of grafts to future surgeons. His system won a prize from the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery. And it is already in use at a London hospital. “The challenge now is to make the code routine,” says Ben.