Children’s Mercy Cleared to Begin Heart Transplants

Children’s Mercy Hospital announced today that its Ward Family Heart Center had been approved to begin pediatric heart transplants. It’s the first hospital in the region to offer that treatment for children.

“The community has been underserved in the area of pediatric heart transplants and that is about to change,” the hospital’s president and CEO, Rand O’Donnell, said in a release. “This is important for families so they don’t have to be separated from their support system. They will receive the highest quality of cardiac care right here, at home.”

The United Network for Organ Sharing, a nonprofit contractor to the federal government, approved the program startup. The network oversees organ allocation and transplant programs nationwide. The hospital said two physicians, thoracic surgeon James St. Louis, and cardiologist Aleissa Barnes, would lead the new program.

The hospital already cares for dozens of patients suffering from heart failure, as well as patients who have undergone transplants elsewhere, and the surgical team performed more than 450 surgical heart procedures last year, the hospital said. On top of that, it oversaw more than 15,000 cardiac outpatient visits, conducted more than 15,000 echocardiograms, and performed more than 500 catheterization and electrophysiology procedures.