Even successfully treated congenital heart defects require lifelong monitoring and specialized treatment.


Even successfully treated congenital heart defects require lifelong monitoring and specialized treatment.
Shaun White, three-time Olympic gold medalist was born with a rare heart condition comprised of four congenital heart defects. Seth Hollander, MD, explains.
Brayden McQuillan, now 3 months old, had a ventricular assist device implanted on his 18th day of life to help his failing heart pump blood.
For years, pediatric cardiologists have been trying to understand the origin of a puzzling congenital defect that creates a spongy texture in the heart muscle wall. Now, Stanford researchers have shown that they can use stem cell techniques to turn donated skin and blood cells from real patients into a useful tool for figuring out how the disease gets started.
We introduced Hana Yago a few months ago when she was awaiting a heart transplant. Today, the Yago family of San Francisco are one step closer home and leaps and bounds closer to their “new normal.”
In medicine we often refer to the “natural history of disease”— the normal course that a disease takes in an individual if no treatment occurs. In the case of congenital heart disease, the “natural history” was often death or, at best, survival with significant limitations. Fortunately, that history has changed.
A Salinas teen faced a heart defect that could lead to sudden death, so our Heart Center leads the way in fixing a defect more common that most doctors realize.
Baby Jackson Lane’s heart problems were “about as dramatic as you can get.” Famed surgeon Dr. Frank Hanley and his team stepped in to save Jackson’s life. “We are just so lucky that we found Dr. Hanley and that our son fought for his life,” said mom Elyse.