Pediatric Cardiology

Having a heart condition can affect your child’s life and yours as well. When the heart is functioning at its best, your child feels good and is able to be more active and engaged. Our large, robust team of pediatric cardiology and heart surgery experts are known throughout the world for providing excellent care and attaining impressive outcomes while caring for a wide range of heart conditions—from simple to extremely complex—in children of all ages.

The Pediatric Cardiology service is at the core of our nationally leading Betty Irene Moore Children’s Heart Center. At Stanford Medicine Children’s Health, our heart care starts with expert diagnostics followed by individualized, targeted care. Our comprehensive care team includes the full range of heart specialists and subspecialists (e.g., cardiologists specialized in connective tissue disorders, single ventricle hearts); cardiac nurses; experts in nutrition, occupational therapy, and mental health; and many others who can address the unique health needs of your child.

Through our multiple pediatric cardiology locations across the Bay Area and beyond, we seek to make care for your child more convenient and bring our expert care closer to home. Your child deserves to live a full and happy life. We’re here to give them that chance.

Why choose Betty Irene Moore Children’s Heart Center for your child's heart care

We care for children from around the globe suffering from heart conditions—from simple to the most complex. Our young heart patients benefit from advanced care, multidisciplinary research, and groundbreaking innovations.

By partnering with our Cardiac Imaging team and our catheterization and interventional cardiologists, we are able to provide the latest nonintrusive cardiac diagnostic tests and images for precise diagnosis of your child’s heart problem. Some of our advanced techniques include advanced echocardiography and reduced-radiation MRIs, cardiac imaging without the use of anesthesia, CT scans, and multidimensional images for better clarity—even in utero.

Our Stanford spirit and reputation for excellent research and innovation means that we provide the latest heart treatments and surgeries, some of them offered nowhere else but here. Whether it’s treating mild arrhythmia or a serious structural heart defect, we’re always exploring ways to improve children’s heart health. Our pediatric cardiology outcomes are excellent, and our heart surgeons are known for thinking outside the box to achieve impressive heart outcomes despite the complexity of issues they treat, and for offering medically complex children another chance when they believe they have none left.

Only a handful of large national heart centers, like ours, have such a robust, comprehensive team that can treat a wide variety of heart conditions. Our heart doctors are specialized and hyperspecialized in congenital (born with) and acquired (developed later) heart disease and aortic disorders. And they see a large number of patients each year, which further sharpens their expertise. It’s why doctors and families from all over the world partner with us to care for the sickest heart patients. Our culture is one of teamwork, where heart doctors and heart surgeons collaborate closely with your provider—and with you, the family, at the center.

Here are some of the heart services and programs we can offer to children with heart conditions given our specialization and focus:

Cardiac imaging: We offer our young heart patients a wide range of leading-edge imaging techniques, including echocardiography, fetal echocardiography, transesophageal and intraoperative echocardiography, MRI, CT, and angiography.
Pediatric vascular research lab: A specialized lab that identifies children at risk for atherosclerosis and vascular disease at an early age.
Electrophysiology and arrhythmia: We offer expert diagnosis for children with irregular heartbeats (e.g., arrhythmia) and employ various treatments to address these issues (e.g., pacemakers, implantable cardioverter-defibrillators or ICDs, transcatheter ablation, and more).
Cardiac catheterization and interventional cardiology: Our team of highly specialized cardiologists offer minimally invasive surgical techniques for advanced diagnostics and heart repair, which can mean a faster recovery for your child. Procedures include cardiac catheterization, angiography (images of the heart vessels), and preterm PDA closure, along with a variety of nonsurgical, minimally invasive procedures.
Cardiovascular connective tissue disorders: We provide expert holistic evaluation and individualized care for children with Marfan, Williams, and Loeys-Dietz syndromes, and other related inherited disorders of the aortic valve.
Exercise and heart disease prevention: We study your child’s heart function with cardiopulmonary exercise stress testing, providing evaluation for athletic participation, hypertension, and hypercholesterolemia.
Pulmonary vascular disease: The lungs and heart work together to deliver oxygen to the body. We evaluate and care for pulmonary hypertension and provide expert care for children with both heart and lung disease in our Pulmonary Vascular Disease Program. We also offer our bridge-to-transplant treatments for children with advanced PH and severe lung disease in our Center for Advanced Lung (CEAL) Therapies.
Single Ventricle Program: A program for children born with one heart ventricle versus two.
Pediatric Advanced Cardiac Therapies (PACT) program: Excellent, deeply specialized and tailored care team for children with heart failure, including care for cardiomyopathy and children with heart transplantation, and heart-lung and lung transplantation needs.
Stanford Adult Congenital Heart Program: Comprehensive care and support for teens and young adults with congenital heart defects, including a smooth and expert transition to adult care thanks to our partnership with Stanford Hospital (the adult hospital).