Pediatric Heart Transplant

Why choose Ochsner Health for your child’s pediatric heart transplant?

While many kids with congenital heart defects, heart muscle disease or life-threatening heart rhythm problems can have their conditions treated with medication, procedures or traditional cardiac surgery, it’s not always the solution. About 500 children each year in the United States find improved health and a better quality of life thanks to a heart transplant — a surgery that replaces a child’s damaged heart with a heart from a deceased organ donor. We partner with the United Network for Organ Sharing to find donor hearts for children in our area on the waiting list.

In Louisiana, Ochsner Children’s Hospital in New Orleans offers the only heart transplant program for pediatric patients from birth to age 18. Since our pediatric heart transplant program began in 1985, Ochsner Children’s Hospital has been a champion of pediatric heart transplants for the state of Louisiana. You can feel confident choosing Ochsner for your child’s heart transplant: Ochsner Children’s Hospital is ranked among the Top 50 Children’s Hospitals by U.S. News & World Report, which also ranked our pediatric cardiology and heart surgery among the country’s leading programs. If your child needs a heart transplant, their heart is in great hands. Literally.

Ochsner’s pediatric heart transplant program is only offered at Ochsner Children’s Hospital in New Orleans. Here, we also offer a 12-bed, private room Pediatric Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit that provides around-the-clock care to kids who have heart issues, including those who have had pediatric heart transplants.

Ochsner’s pediatric heart transplant team takes a collaborative care approach so that we can provide the best possible care to any child in need of a heart transplant. Our team includes:

Pediatric cardiologists
Pediatric cardiothoracic surgeons
Pediatric heart transplant coordinators
Pediatric cardiac anesthesiologists
Pharmacists
Psychologists
Social workers
Certified Child Life Specialists
Palliative care team

Ochsner’s pediatric heart transplant team uses the latest technological advances to care for patients. While kids with end-stage heart failure wait for a donor heart, the pediatric heart transplant team can help them bridge the gap with devices that pump for the heart, such as the Berlin Heart EXCOR Pediatric ventricular assist device, HeartMate 3 left ventricular assist device and catheter-based supports.

Our pediatric heart transplant cardiologists are also involved in international research focused on improving outcomes before and after transplant, as well as examining racial and socioeconomic bias in receiving heart transplants. Learn more about the research of Katerina Boucek, MD, and Jake Kleinmahon, MD.

To refer a patient to our program, call Jessica Gremillion, RN, clinical transplant coordinator, at 504-842-5200.

FAQs

At Ochsner Health, our pediatric heart transplant recipients have a 100% one-year survival rate. Our team works hard to prevent rejection in transplanted hearts by providing regular evaluations and medications to help prevent the immune system from attacking the transplanted heart.

Ochsner’s pediatric heart transplant program provides heart transplants for children from birth to 18 years.

The actual surgery for a pediatric heart transplant takes between four to eight hours in the operating room, but the process of getting to the operating room is much longer. Many kids wait several months, or even a year, to be matched with a donated heart that meets their criteria.

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