Complex Biventricular Reconstruction Program

Being diagnosed with a complex structural heart defect is often overwhelming for the patient and his or her family. We are honored to be part of the solution and give individuals living with a complex heart defect a better shot at life. Our Complex Biventricular Reconstruction program offers innovative surgical solutions that go above and beyond to re-create normal circulation in children and adults of all ages.

Our highly talented and nationally recognized cardiovascular surgeons offer biventricular reconstruction—a reconfiguring of the heart that creates two working ventricles. The reconstruction includes multiple repairs completed in stages, or all at once, for a wide variety of rare and complex congenital heart conditions. We also provide second opinions to explore biventricular conversion for patients with single ventricles.

Our program’s ultimate goal is to bring hearts with complex defects to as close to normal anatomy as possible, and in doing so, improve heart function.

Why choose Stanford Medicine Children’s Health for complex biventricular reconstruction

• We employ bold, creative surgical solutions to give patients their best chance. We’ve built a team of top cardiovascular surgeons and congenital heart disease specialists from across the world who are not afraid to take on challenges and creatively problem-solve to find never-before-considered solutions. Our surgeons employ bold and sometimes novel surgical techniques to significantly improve the lives of children and adults with complex heart defects. To this point, at the Betty Irene Moore Children’s Heart Center, we are often able to offer a pathway to biventricular circulation even to those patients who are not considered candidates at other institutions.
• Our heart team takes pride in their excellent outcomes. Despite taking on some of the toughest pediatric heart cases across the nation, our Moore Children’s Heart Center’s overall pediatric heart surgery survival rates remain excellent, above 96%. And we perform 700+ pediatric heart surgeries annually, more than double the national average. A heart center with a high volume of surgeries means a high level of expertise, which in turn translates into better outcomes for you or your child.
• We provide research-driven, groundbreaking care. Thanks to our physician-researchers at Stanford Children’s Health, our own heart center research program (BASE Initiative), and collaborations with third-party vendors from the Silicon Valley and beyond, we lead or participate in innovative research projects that help improve our care. For example, we use advanced 3-D imaging such as EchoPixel and SimVascular to give us a better understanding of complex hearts, which helps improve our surgical planning and surgical outcomes. New research on medical devices, such as our current exploration of growing hypoplastic hearts, also informs our care.
• We offer new hope for people with single ventricles. Our program stands apart from many others in that we are able to offer biventricular solutions for certain anatomic diagnoses that other heart centers would automatically assign a single ventricle repair. If you/your child have undergone heart surgeries to convert to a single working pumping chamber, or if you have been told that it’s the only option, we welcome you to explore complex biventricular reconstruction with us. We consider biventricular reconstruction for even the most challenging anatomies, such as remote ventricular septal defects (VSDs), crisscross hearts, or straddling atrioventricular valves. We believe that by performing biventricular reconstruction, we can help you/your child live their best lives.