UC Davis Pediatric Heart Center

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• Congenital Heart Disease 
• Surgical Intervention to Correct Congenital Heart Disease 
• Non-surgical Intervention 
• Specialized Care for Complex Heart Defects
• Diagnostic Services 
• Outreach Clinics 

The UC Davis Children’s Hospital Pediatric Heart Center offers an integrated team of specialists including doctors, nurses and other health care professionals, available to provide a comprehensive range of diagnostic, therapeutic and surgical procedures for infants, children and adolescents with congenital as well as acquired heart defects. 

Congenital Heart Disease

Congenital heart defects are structural problems within the heart that are present at birth. They result when a mishap occurs during heart development. This usually occurs soon after conception and often before the mother is aware that she is pregnant. Defects range in severity from simple problems, such as "holes" between chambers of the heart, to very severe malformations, such as complete absence of one or more chambers or valves. Each year, more than 40,000 children in the United States are born with a heart defect, known as congenital heart disease.

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Surgical Intervention to Correct Congenital Heart Disease

Surgical intervention for infants diagnosed with congenital heart disease is used for a variety of heart defects, including:

• Hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a condition in which the left side of the heart is under-developed
• Tetralogy of Fallot, a complex defect that is the most common cause blue syndrome
• Pulmonary atresia, a condition in which the pulmonary valve fails to develop properly
• Transposition of the great arteries, which occurs when there is an abnormal arrangement of the primary blood vessels of the heart
• Truncus arteriosus, which occurs when only one artery connects to the heart instead of two

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Specialized Care for Complex Heart Defects

The UC Davis Norwood Program – the first in inland Northern California – offers two types of Norwood procedures to address and repair heart defects of different severity.

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Non-surgical Intervention

Cardiac Catheterization

Some conditions that once could only be treated through invasive cardiothoracic surgery today may be treated using catheters, thin, flexible, narrow tubes threaded through the blood vessels to the heart. Cardiac cathertization can be used to make repairs, like closing holes in the heart muscle or removing obstructions from the blood vessels. Stents, or small metal mesh tubes, may be placed in narrowed or blocked blood vessels to keep them open.  Catheterization may be used to correct conditions that include:

• Patent ductus arteriosus, a condition in which the ductus arteriosus – a temporary part of the fetal blood system – fails to close after birth. If left uncorrected the condition can lead to congestive heart failure.
• Pulmonic stenosis and aorctic stenosis are diseases of the large arteries which originate from the ventricles and send oxygenated blood to the body and the lungs.
• Atrial septal defect is a defect or “hole” in the septum, which allows blood flow between the left and right atria.

Cardiac Electrophysiology

Pediatric cardiac electrophysiology uses a newer technique known as radiofrequency catheter ablation to treat cardiac arrhythmias, changes in the speed or pattern of the heart beat, caused by disturbances of the heart’s electrophysiology. Ablation destroys or disrupts areas of the heart that are the source of the electrical irregularities. UC Davis Children’s Hospital’s Heart Center is the only hospital in the Sacramento Region to offer this therapy.

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Diagnostic Services

Fetal echocardiography provides an invaluable tool for the diagnosis of congenital heart disease and evaluation of fetal arrhythmias, thus allowing for the earliest identification of conditions that may require immediate intervention after birth. Pediatric echocardiography is used to diagnose heart conditions in older children.

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Outreach Clinics

In addition to seeing patients at the UC Davis Children’s Hospital in Sacramento, our pediatric heart specialists hold periodic outreach clinics throughout Northern California. This allows children in outlying areas to receive a consultation and evaluation without having to travel to Sacramento.

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