$50 million gift to Packard Children’s Hospital will advance care … – Stanford Medical Center Report

By daniellenierenberg

Next wave of innovation and discovery

Over the past 70 years, new surgical techniques and medical therapies, some of which were developed at the Stanford School of Medicine and Packard Childrens, have evolved and greatly improved outcomes for children with almost every type ofcongenital heart disease.

Heart defects that were once universally fatal can now be surgically improved. As patients born with heart disease survive longer, there are now more adults than children in the United States with congenital heart disease. However, further advancements are still needed to ensure a healthier future for patients, many of whom continue to face a compromised quality of life and require subsequent surgeries.

Surgical intervention can repair, but it rarely can truly cure, said pediatric heart surgeonFrank Hanley, MD, who is also the Lawrence Crowley, MD, Endowed Professor in Child Health at the School of Medicine and executive director of the Betty Irene Moore Childrens Heart Center. Children who have received complex surgical intervention to repair a cardiac abnormality require careful monitoring and specialized care throughout their life span. We imagine a day when a child born with a poorly working aortic valve, rather than undergoing multiple open-heart operations throughout his lifetime, instead receives a replacement valve engineered from his own stem cells. Dr. and Mrs. Moores gift comes at a critical juncture enabling us to advance beyond surgical repair to the discovery of transformational treatments and interventions and, ultimately, to true cures.

The center has an overall survival rate of 98 percent. Beyond survival alone, the goal is now to ensure an excellent overall outcome from normal brain function for even the most fragile patients, to the ability for children to perform well in school and to exercise and enjoy an active life into adulthood.

We are committed to providingbabies and children with heart disease and their families with the happiest, healthiest lives possible, from the early identification of problems, to expert intervention, and finally to a lifetime of care and support, saidStephen Roth, MD, MPH, chief of pediatriccardiologyand director of the Betty Irene Moore Childrens Heart Center.

Dr. and Mrs. Moores incredible gift will not only bolster our clinical capabilities for children and families receiving care now in the Betty Irene Moore Childrens Heart Center, it will also accelerate basic and translational research by Stanford Medicine faculty and scientists to develop more precise techniques to predict, prevent and cure, said Lloyd Minor, MD, dean of the School of Medicine. When it comes to achieving precision health, we must think as big as we can not just about treating disease, but about making and keeping people healthy and nowhere is this more true than in children.

In 2017, Packard Childrens will complete its major expansion, becoming the most technologically advanced, family-friendly and environmentally sustainable childrens hospital in the nation. The Moores gift will enable the Childrens Heart Center to expand its state-of-the-art clinical and research facilities, train the future leaders of cardiovascular medicine and surgery, and improve the field of pediatric cardiology and pediatric cardiovascular surgery through innovative research. In addition, the center will expand its clinical facilities, including a newly designed outpatient center.

Packard Childrens established the Childrens Heart Center in 2001 to focus more expertise and resources on congenital heart disease, the most common type of birth defect worldwide. Each year, approximately 40,000 children in the United States are born with heart defects, and an additional 25,000 children develop some kind of acquired heart disease.

The center has gained recognition as a national and international destination program for several highly specialized surgical procedures, and is also a full-service cardiology program that cares for patients with all forms of cardiovascular conditions. Under the leadership of Hanley and Roth, the center receives more than 25,000 patient visits annually and performs 80 to 90 percent of all cardiac surgical care for children in northern and central California.