The right care, for life

Thanks to advances in medical, surgical and transcatheter interventions, the number of adults living with congenital heart disease (more than 1 million) in the United States is far greater than the number of children affected and is expected to continue to grow each year.

Thanks to advances in medical, transcatheter and surgical therapies, children born with a heart defect are now expected to live well into adulthood. We begin the process of preparing pediatric patients for the transition to adult care around age 12. Our approach to this transition features four milestone goals--helping patients understand their diagnosis and complexity of care, helping patients gain independence, making the move to adult care, and self-management. 

Our team members received specialized training to understand and care for your heart and accommodate changes as you grow older. Our goal is to help transition age-appropriate adolescents (13 years of age or older) as well as adults living with congenital heart disease understand and successfully manage their own care, including:

While the medical care and treatment for a congenital heart defect you received as an infant or child helped make things better, few defects are “cured." As an adolescent or adult with congenital heart disease, you need specialized, lifelong follow-up care provided by a regional Adult Congenital Heart Disease (ACHD) center of excellence.

An ACHD center constitutes the medical ‘home’ required to identify and/or address not only the impact of a congenital heart defect, but also late onset complications commonly encountered. As a result, this type of specialized ACHD care has been demonstrated to improve quality of life and outcomes for adult congenital heart patients.

Our multidisciplinary team includes specially-trained adult congenital cardiologists, a dedicated care coordinator and medical social worker, as well as congenital heart surgeons, interventionalist and electrophysiologist.