Our Heart Center is proud to introduce the inaugural edition of Seattle Children’s Cardiac Beat. In the first issue, you’ll find information about:
Seattle Children’s Cardiac Beat will publish news and information about the latest diagnostic, therapeutic and research advances in cardiovascular diseases and cardiac surgery at Seattle Children’s.
February is National Heart Month.
When a child’s heart is failing, Seattle Children’s Heart Center is equipped to deliver the latest lifesaving treatments from a caring team with the most experience and best outcomes in t
For Hudson, who has a rare form of muscular dystrophy that precipitously weakened his heart at age 9, the Heart Center’s cardiologists turned over every stone to treat his heart failure and buy time for him to get a new heart.
The latest treatments
Hudson’s care team used the latest ventricular assist device (VAD) technology to keep his heart going. Seattle Children’s is the only pediatric heart center in the Pacific Northwest with the depth of expertise to offer every type of therapy for heart failure, including VADs. We offer many types of VADs, including newer options not available at every hospital. Some patients will use more than one VAD.
Hudson first had an Impella VAD implanted when medication wasn’t working. It can be inserted with a small incision through an arm artery and can stabilize a patient before a bigger surgery. It’s a less invasive, less permanent option that in Hudson’s case was a stepping stone to a more durable, larger VAD. Read full post »
Seattle Children’s Heart Center has a new, state-of-the-art home in Forest B, the 310,000-square-foot addition to Seattle Children’s hospital campus specifically designed for transformative, patient-centered care.
Dr. Brian Morray, director of Seattle Children’s Cardiac Catheterization Laboratories, confers with a cardiac patient in one of Forest B’s new spaces.
The Heart Center occupies nearly 30,000 square feet on the sixth floor of the new building. The dedicated space doubles the number of operating rooms (ORs) devoted to cardiac patients and co-locates the cardiac induction rooms, ORs, catheterization labs, postanesthesia care unit (PACU) recovery rooms and cardiac intensive care unit (ICU) into what is known as the Heart Center Suites. Although the cardiac ICU is technically located in Forest A, it is separated from the ORs by a three-foot walkway.
This co-location of services greatly reduces patient transport time and facilitates those times when a patient needs to go quickly from the catheterization laboratory to surgery or from surgery to a catheterization lab. Read full post »
