‘It’s wondeful news’
Montreal teen has article published in New England Journal of Medicine
MONTREAL - Thomas F. Khairy was on a school bus with his classmates, returning from seeing a play in early March, when he received the message confirming that he was going to be published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The 15-year-old couldn't tell anyone around him, as the news was under embargo.
“It was awkward,” Khairy recounted Thursday afternoon. “I was screaming, and my friends were like, ‘What?' And I couldn't talk about it. I had to act like nothing happened. Everyone wanted to know.”
Now everyone knows. On Wednesday afternoon, the journal published the article, Infections Associated With Resterilized Pacemakers and Defibrillators. Khairy is the youngest principal author ever to have an article in the prestigious publication.
It all started in the summer of 2017 when Khairy, who was 12 at the time, joined a humanitarian effort in which he did research on rotation at the Montreal Heart Institute (MHI).
He was helping out on a long-running project begun by Dr. Raphael Castan in 1983, in which used pacemakers and defibrillators were sent to countries including Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Cuba and Ecuador, to be used by patients in need.
In many countries, such machines are thrown out after being used.
Khairy began assisting MHI electrophysiology technician Marie-andrée Lupien.
“She would take pacemakers sent to funeral homes, that had been removed from deceased bodies, resterilize them and send them to countries in South America where patients couldn't afford a new one,” Khairy explained.
“I asked her if she knew how many lives had been saved (since the program started). She didn't know. So I told her I was going to find out. She was so nice. She took me under her wing, and supervised everything. It became a project to make a database of everyone who had received resterilized pacemakers
and defibrillators.
“Once that was accomplished, I came up with the idea to find out if it was safe to resterilize pacemakers and defibrillators. (Such a study) had never been done.”
The answer to Khairy's first question was 1,748; that's how many lives had been saved by the resterilized machines over the decades. He ended up using the information of 1,051 of those patients for his study, and comparing the results of each with three patients using new pacemakers or defibrillators.
“I had to hand-pick three people of similar age, gender, type of device and date of implantation,” he said.
He was aided by his father, MHI cardiologist Dr. Paul Khairy, as well as by Lupien, and various teams at the MHI and cardiologists in Central America.
“Writing the article took a very, very long time,” Khairy said, noting the help of “all of the authors — I can highlight the doctors in the countries mentioned … that made possible such an accumulation of data. Without their accuracy, I wouldn't have been able to
meet the New England Journal of Medicine standards.”
In order to get the most out of his efforts, he also presented his research at a science fair at Loyola High School. Unsurprisingly, he received a mark of 100 on the project.
“The ultimate conclusion of the study is basically that it's safe to use resterilized pacemakers and defibrillators,” Khairy noted.
The team at the MHI told him that his findings constituted a scientific breakthrough, and led the charge to get it published.
Lupien sees Khairy's article as the vindication of many years of volunteer work, by herself and others before her, that will help save many lives.
“It's something that should have been done a long time ago,” she said of the study. “It's wonderful news.”
As the news spread on Thursday, Khairy was still processing his achievement.
“It hasn't really sunk in yet,” he said. “I'm really happy for the whole team, for everyone who contributed to this. It's not just an accomplishment for me, but for everyone.”