Medical Reports: Rapid Results

There's nothing worse than waiting on lab results, especially when you're the parent of a critically ill child, but a new device is bringing the laboratory to the patient's bedside. Seven's Diana Diaz shows us how doctors are getting Rapid Results.

WSVN -- When Nick and Laura Wright brought their newborn home from the hospital everything seemed perfect.

Laura Wright: "He was a healthy baby. He ate and slept and cried and did all the baby things."

But at his first check-up, doctors delivered devastating news. Little Brady had a critical heart defect. The arteries from his heart were malformed and were not properly pumping oxygen throughout his body.

Nick Wright: "The first things that came to my mind were, was is he going to survive? I was told he was going to have open heart surgery and Brady weighs less than seven pounds."

Brady had surgery to repair his heart, and then spent weeks in the intensive care unit.

Laura Wright: "There for a while there was 15 to 20 machines hooked up to him."

Caring for a heart patient, especially a baby can be touch and go. Doctors depend on crucial blood tests to monitor patients, but can often spend hours waiting on results from the lab.

Dr. Redmond Burke: "Every doctor can tell you how agonizing it is to stand at the bedside with a sick child, and know that you need to some key data to make a decision, and you are waiting for the lab to send the results back delay in medicine is deadly."

Now, there's less waiting and worrying thanks to a new device called the I-STAT being used in the cardiac ICU at Miami Children's Hospital.

Nurse: "The C02 is good for him, lactic is low. Just what we like."

The small device gives doctors lab results right at the patient's bedside.

Dr. Burker: "The key types of information we can get from this device are what's the oxygen level, what's the acid level, what are they key chemical levels. If I know those I can make a good decision to save the baby's life."

A small amount of blood is taken from the patient and then put into the machine.

Dr. Redmond Burke: "I can take two drops of blood from a baby, put it into the device and have a result in two minutes."

Two minutes compared to the one to two hours a hospital lab normally needs to produce the same results. It helped doctors monitor Brady during his recovery, and gave his parents peace of mind.

Nick Wright: "For Brady's sake, thank God they had these or any number of things could have gone wrong in that time period."

Now, Brady is heading home with mom and dad hopefully for good this time.

Laura Wright: "It seems like he's going to be happy baby boy."

Diana Diaz: "Miami Children's Hospital is one of the first in the country to get the I-STAT. The hope is to eventually have it in emergency rooms and ICUs all over the country."