Our Center for Heart Care is the premier regional referral center for the specialized care of infants and children with congenital heart disease. As part of its mission, the Center for the Heart Care is helping train the next generation of leaders in the field of Pediatric Cardiac Critical Care Medicine. Pediatric Cardiac Critical Care Medicine has become increasingly specialized over time as the conditions of patients have become more complicated. There is no greater example of this than the field of Pediatric Cardiac Critical Care Medicine, where providing excellent care to these very complex patients requires training beyond what is provided in most Pediatric Critical Care Medicine fellowships. In addition, as the number of children with congenital heart disease in society continues to grow, there becomes a greater demand for highly trained physicians to care for them.
Our Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit (CVICU) is a 36 bed unit including twelve step-down beds. We admit more than 1,000 patients per year, who are expertly cared for by a team of dedicated practitioners. Our Center for the Heart Care performs more than 275 cardiopulmonary bypass cases of all complexities every year. Additionally, our CVICU is the fulcrum of an extremely busy heart failure/heart transplant program, performing about fifteen transplants a year, as well as caring for patients with a wide variety of extracorporeal cardiac assist devices, from Berlin LVADs to Total Artificial Hearts.