Pediatric Heart Surgery

CHOC is the only hospital in Orange County to provide advanced pediatric cardiac surgical care. The hospital’s impressive offering of surgical services includes dedicated, cardiovascular operating rooms with extracorporeal life support (ECLS)—a life-saving technology not found anywhere else in the county. Moreover, we are the only facility in Orange County that performs newborn and pediatric open-heart surgery and have done so on infants weighing as little at 1.4 kilograms (3 pounds 1 ounce).

The Heart Institute’s surgical team offers the latest in cardiac surgical techniques to repair congenital heart defects in patients of all ages, and includes board-certified, pediatrics-trained heart surgeons and cardiac anesthesiologists. We offer a full range of surgical procedures to correct congenital heart defects including:

• Aortic stenosis
• Arterial switch for transposition of the great arteries (vessels)
• Atrial septal defect
• Atrioventricular (AV) canal defect
• Coarctation of the aorta
• Patent ductus arteriosus
• Pulmonary atresia 
• Pulmonary stenosis
• Tetralogy of Fallot
• Truncus arteriosus
• Ventricular septal defect.

We are also proud to offer the Norwood procedure for hypoplastic left heart syndrome.

CHOC has long been a leader in cardiac surgical care. Dr. Richard Gates, CHOC surgeon-in-chief and medical director of the Heart Institute, was instrumental in the development of new systems used to protect children’s hearts during surgery and improve heart-lung machine technology. Although previously available for adults, Dr. Gates worked with bioengineers at Quest Medical to develop techniques and instrumentations that could be used to bring cardiopulmonary bypass technology to children–including babies as small as 2 kilograms (4 pounds 6.5 ounces).

Together, Dr. Gates and Quest Medical developed the pediatric myocardial protection system (MPS) that delivers oxygen to the heart during open-heart surgery. CHOC was the very first institution to offer this lifesaving technology that is now used in more than 60 institutions around the globe. We are continuing to lead the way in raising the standard of care and surgical outcomes for neonates undergoing open heart surgery.

Traditionally, a baby’s body temperature is lowered to close to 18 degrees Celsius (approximately 64 degrees Fahrenheit) for surgeries including procedures to repair hypoplastic left heart syndrome, truncus arteriosis, arterial switch and transposition of the great vessels. Although this is a generally accepted practice around the world, lowering a baby’s body temperature can lead to neurological damage that can have both short- and long-term consequences.

At CHOC, we are dedicated to not only caring for each child’s immediate health concerns, but their long-term health as well. Because of this, our surgeons have successfully pioneered surgical techniques that can be used to maintain a child’s normal circulation and body temperature during surgery. We are the only hospital in Southern California providing surgeries to neonates without cooling the child’s body temperature and actively participate in research studies documenting the neurological benefits of these techniques. Moreover, our experts have presented these groundbreaking techniques to other pediatric surgeons from around the world at meetings and conferences for the Society of Thoracic Surgeons and the Congenital Heart Surgeons Society.