Complex Biventricular Reconstruction Program Services

Offering the following services for children and adults

Expert diagnostic testing and imaging

We diagnose children of all ages, as well as adults, with complex heart defects, including during fetal life. The approach of the team at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health’s Betty Irene Moore Children’s Heart Center to complex biventricular reconstruction begins with a rigorous evaluation of the heart’s anatomy, including a thorough exam, along with cardiac testing and cardiac imaging. We test how well the left and right ventricles perform using echocardiography and MRI. This investigation empowers us to diagnose you/your child accurately, gain a complete picture of the heart, and consider the possibility of complex biventricular reconstruction.

Once we determine if you/your child is a candidate, we use innovative technology to guide surgery, allowing us to go above and beyond to envision the best way to reconstruct the heart. By collaborating with advanced cardiac imaging experts, we are able to use complex 3-D models for heart surgery planning, as well as holographic renderings of our patient’s own heart that our surgeons use during heart surgery. For example, EchoPixel, a virtual imaging technology that we helped develop, digitally converts computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans into 3-D images and empowers doctors to better plan heart surgeries for improved outcomes.

Biventricular reconstruction of complex congenital heart defects

Our program offers complex biventricular reconstruction—a reconfiguring of the heart that includes multiple repairs completed in stages, or all at once, to create two working heart ventricles, or pumping chambers. We consider this highly complex surgery for a variety of rare and complicated congenital heart conditions, and for individuals who have or need single ventricle palliation (surgery). With complex biventricular reconstruction, we repair defects and redirect blood flow to bring the heart closer to normal heart structure. The goal is to improve heart function so that you/your child can live a full life. Complex biventricular reconstruction can sometimes delay or prevent the need for a heart transplant and possibly result in fewer heart surgeries in the future.

We offer a variety of approaches to biventricular reconstruction, each tailored to you/your child’s congenital heart defect. After meeting with you/your child and completing a diagnostic evaluation, our team will review with you a summary of our findings, make surgical recommendations, and determine next steps.

Comprehensive, coordinated long-term care management

When you/your child receive care at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, our heart care team partners with your cardiologist to provide long-term monitoring of your/your child’s condition. By following our patients throughout their care journey and providing regular assessments, we are able to make more informed medical decisions in challenging situations, such as whether or not new interventions are needed, and when. Our expert management of care includes recommendations on frequency of imaging and testing, cardiac medications, physical therapy, nutrition, and cardiopulmonary exercise. We also provide subspecialty, comprehensive, and ongoing care for individuals with complex congenital heart conditions such as single ventricle. And thanks to our partnership with Stanford Health Care, the adult hospital adjacent to ours, we are able to offer expert, coordinated care not only for children and teens with congenital heart disease but also for adults with CHD.

Patient and family support

At Stanford Medicine Children’s Health, we care for you/your child as if you are family. We want you to feel at home and feel supported in every way. While you stay with us, we welcome you to take advantage of our hospital’s extensive patient and family services, where you can access case management, interpreter, and child life and creative arts services. In addition, our social services can help you receive financial guidance, psychological support, and health education. They also can help your family with access to housing and lodging assistance for long-term stays.

If your child requires a complex heart surgery or interventional cardiac catheterization procedure, ask about our Heart Center Coordination Program, which can provide your family with a cardiac nurse navigator to guide you through your child’s care journey at Stanford Children’s. The program is currently supporting pediatric patients with certain complex heart needs.

Second opinions

Our biventricular reconstruction techniques been known to change individuals’ future outlook and provide them with a much better quality of life, today. If your referring doctor suspects or has diagnosed a heart defect in you, your fetus, or your child, we can provide a second opinion that helps answer questions and explore possible biventricular reconstruction solutions.

Even if you/your child has already undergone a surgical repair for a congenital heart condition, such as a single ventricle defect or congenitally corrected transposition of the great arteries (CCTGA), you/your child might be a candidate for biventricular reconstruction or biventricular conversion (reconstruction to two ventricles, after surgery for single ventricle palliation).

We provide creative biventricular solutions that many other major children’s heart centers would not consider possible. That’s why we encourage you to reach out for a personalized second opinion so that we can determine whether or not you/your child are a candidate, and if not, to provide us with the chance to expertly weigh in on an enhanced care plan.

Our Complex Biventricular Reconstruction program offers second opinions on all congenital heart conditions that are listed on our treatments and conditions page, as well as others. We welcome you or your cardiologist to contact us.