Neonatal Cardiac Surgery

About one out of 100 children is born with a CHD, a structural heart problem that develops during pregnancy. If your child has a CHD — whether it’s an uncomplicated type that needs only minimal surgical treatment or a complex type that requires surgery shortly after birth — we aim to give you and your baby the best possible care.

Our team draws on decades of collective experience to reach a diagnosis and devise an appropriate treatment plan for the CHD and any possible related conditions, including hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS) and transposition of the great arteries (TGA).

Our goal is to provide continuity of care for you and your child — even as early as before birth. We work closely with our colleagues at the Fetal Care and Surgery Center and the Fetal Cardiology Program to provide screening and care for mothers whose babies have been diagnosed, in utero, with cardiac conditions.

We also collaborate with other hospitals so that treatment can begin in earnest after you deliver and arrive at Boston Children’s. Our experience in treating CHD during the neonatal period helps us aim for not only the best short-term outcomes for your baby, but it also establishes long-term outcomes that will benefit your child into adulthood.

If your baby requires surgical intervention after delivery, our cardiac surgeons, advanced practice providers, and care coordinators are here to support you and your child during the fetal stage, inpatient stay, and post-operatively.

If you would like to schedule a consultation with the cardiac surgery team, please contact Jacqui Gover at 617-355-1522 or jacqueline.gover@cardio.chboston.org.

We first assess your child to determine the best timing for surgery. Some children need surgery immediately; others first need their hearts to mature before an operation, so we will instead use catheters and stents as a temporary step.

When your child is ready for surgery, they will benefit from our mission to collaborate and seek the best way to treat CHD. Those surgical treatment plans are made with careful consideration by our neonatal cardiac care team. Comprised of neonatal cardiac surgeons, your family’s primary cardiologist, interventional cardiologists, anesthesiologists, and attending specialists from the hospital’s Cardiac Intensive Care Unit (CICU), the team meets frequently to review your child’s health and map out the most appropriate treatment strategy.

Nutritionists, medical engineers, and other specialists are also collaborating with our team to ensure your child has the best care. Here is a look at their programs:

• Cardiac Intensive Care Unit: The 48-bed CICU cares for patients who just had cardiac surgery or who need non-surgical treatment for acquired and congenital heart disease. CICU clinicians closely monitor patients and provide family-centered care.
• Cardiac Neurodevelopmental Program: This program complements children’s core medical care by monitoring their development and learning and proactively connecting them to resources that can help them meet their developmental and personal goals.
• Cardiovascular 3D Modeling and Simulation Program: Engineers create 3D models and perform detailed analyses of a patient’s heart anatomy to help cardiac surgeons and cardiologists create intricate surgery plans.
• Inpatient Cardiology's Acute Cardiac Care Unit: The ACCU provides around-the-clock acute care of heart patients.
• PEdiatric CArdiac Nutrition (PECAN) Program: The experts of this program aim to improve outcomes in heart patients by fostering healthy nutrition. They closely monitor growth and make nutritional recommendations to help children get strong enough for surgery and ensure their maturation continues after treatment.
• Home Monitoring Program: The program ensures that families of newborns with high-risk heart conditions, as well as those who have been diagnosed with a condition but show no symptoms, have the tools and support they need at home as they care for their child, whether it’s before the child’s first surgery or in the period between surgeries.

The many specialists caring for your child constantly ask one another: “What kind of surgery is needed?” “Can we consider non-surgical treatments to prepare for surgery or maybe even use in place of surgery?” Also, before and after surgery, we coordinate with the Cardiac Neurodevelopment Program to include the diagnosis and treatment of neurodevelopmental conditions in treatment plans for patients who are potentially at risk.

Neonatal surgery can be complex and difficult. That’s why every neonatal operation at Boston Children’s involves a team of experienced anesthesiologists and at least two neonatal cardiac surgeons. We consistently see better outcomes for patients when more than one set of experienced eyes and hands repair a CHD. Our experience and belief in collaboration allow us to constantly improve surgical treatment so that you and your child can safely get on a path to recovery.

Our Department of Cardiac Surgery team collaborates with colleagues across disciplines to deliver the best care for your newborn — and we have some of the best success rates. (Data are taken from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) Congenital Heart Surgery Database.)

Four-year survival

Over a four-year span, we have better neonatal survival rates for higher complexity cases than STS national benchmarks.