At Yale New Haven Children’s Heart Center, we help children feel better. Our goal is to provide safe, sustainable, comprehensive care for pediatric and congenital heart disease across the lifespan. We know that one in every 100 babies will be born with a heart problem, and about a quarter of those will need heart surgery or another intervention within their first year of life. Some will need additional operations as they grow. Children’s heart problems are different from heart disease in adults, and there are many different types. We treat all of them. Our doctors are innovators—many have national and international reputations—and they have access to the latest tools and techniques. They often diagnose heart defects in utero and treat babies soon after they are born, help older children live normal lives, and support teenagers as they transition from pediatric to adult cardiac care. When they aren’t caring for patients, many of our doctors are in the research lab investigating better ways to fix small hearts. We are the only hospital in Connecticut that performs such highly specialized procedures as patent ductus arteriosus (PDA) closures for newborns, allowing many to avoid invasive surgeries, and the only pediatric center in the state to provide heart transplants and mechanical cardiac assist devices. Many of our outcomes surpass the national average in such areas as mortality and length of stay. Yale wants patients to have easy access to care in their communities whenever possible. So, we care for our young patients in Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital and at other locations throughout the state from Greenwich to Old Saybrook.

The Advanced Heart failure Program is a rapidly expanding service at the front lines of treating heart failure. Launched in 1988, the program builds upon decades of experience treating failing hearts. In 2019, we performed 49 heart transplants, putting us among the top centers of the country. Our left ventricular assist device program treats more cases than any other program in the Northeast. It provides heart pumps for patients who need support while they are waiting for a donor heart or who are ineligible for a transplant and need another permanent solution. Heart transplants are the gold standard treatment for patients with end-stage heart failure. But many face a long, difficult wait for a donor heart, and some don’t survive. Yale Medicine is one of a handful of centers in the country to push existing boundaries in heart transplant by aggressively seeking out donor hearts other centers turn down even though they may be suitable for some patients. This process, using what’s called “donation after circulatory death” (DCD) organs, is helping more of our patients get heart transplants sooner. What’s more, our one-year survival rates for heart transplants—93%—are better than the national average. Multi-organ transplants People who live with heart failure have a high likelihood of also having kidney dysfunction from a variety of causes, and this can be a limiting factor in being able to get a heart transplant. For these patients, our heart specialists collaborate with Yale Medicine’s world-class abdominal transplant team and have achieved a robust volume and successful track record in performing heart-kidney transplants. Pioneers in LVAD Yale Medicine helped to pioneer the use of left ventricular assist devices (LVADs), providing patients whose hearts are too weak to function on their own with implantable devices that can pump blood for them. Yale Medicine is one of the leaders in the Northeast in volume and outcomes with LVADs and is certified by the Joint Commission, the nation’s predominant standard-setting and accrediting body in health care. Each one of our patients is treated by a team that includes cardiologists, transplant surgeons, infectious disease specialists, nephrologists, critical care doctors, nurses, pharmacists, social workers, nutritionists, and transplant coordinators, among others. Transplant doctors at Yale are national leaders in the field. Currently, the presidents of United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) and the American Society of Transplantation are at Yale, and they have helped to write the guidelines for how to treat patients after solid organ transplants as the field advances. Outcomes above average Patients whose future once seemed difficult have survived for decades after a heart transplant or LVAD implant. The average one-year survival after a Yale Medicine heart transplant is 93%, which is higher than the national average. This is partly due to meticulous follow-up care that includes treatment with immunosu

We designed our echocardiogram laboratory with families in mind. An echocardiogram is a test that uses sound waves to measure heart activity, and is used to diagnose various heart conditions such as arrhythmia, structural problems of the heart, and congenital heart disease. We realize medical tests, even routine ones, might make children anxious. Each of our state-of-the-art imaging suites is equipped with a television and DVD player to make children more comfortable during their evaluation. Our highly experienced staff performs more than 3,500 echocardiograms per year, including transthoracic, transesophageal, three-dimensional, and intracardiac approaches. We also offer noninvasive assessments of cardiac anatomy and physiology. The results from our studies play a vital role in planning for surgery, assessment before and during surgery, as well as in the Interventional Cardiac Catheterization Program. The Yale Fetal Cardiovascular Center was one of the first centers of its kind. Each year, we perform more than 1,000 fetal echocardiograms in women whose pregnancy may be affected by congenital heart disease or arrhythmia. The center provides a multidisciplinary approach to comprehensive care with physicians from maternal-fetal medicine, pediatric cardiology, and perinatal medicine, as well as genetic counselors.