Critical Heart Disease in Infants and Children

Pediatric intensivists, cardiologists, cardiac surgeons, and anesthesiologists from the leading centers around the world present the collaborative perspectives, concepts, and state-of-the-art knowledge required to care for children with congenital and acquired heart disease in the ICU. Their multidisciplinary approach encompasses every aspect of the relevant basic scientific principles, medical and pharmacologic treatments, and surgical techniques and equipment. From the extracardiac Fontan procedure, and the Ross procedure through new pharmacologic agents and the treatment of pulmonary hypertension to mechanical assist devices, heart and lung transplantation, and interventional cardiac catheterization―all of the developments that are affecting this rapidly advancing field are covered in depth.

• Employs well-documented tables, text boxes, and algorithms to make clinical information easy to access.
• Features chapters each written and reviewed by intensivists, surgeons, and cardiologists.
• Integrates the authors' extensive experiences with state-of-the-art knowledge from the literature.

• Offers four completely new chapters: Cardiac Trauma, Congenital Heart Disease in the Adult, Congenitally Corrected Transposition of the Great Arteries, and Outcome Evaluation.
• Describes the basic pharmacology and clinical applications of all of the new pharmacologic agents.
• Details important refinements and developments in surgical techniques, including the Ross pulmonary autograft replacement of the aortic valve, video-assisted fluoroscopy, and the extracardiac Fontan connection, and discusses their indications and potential complications.
• Explores the latest advances in the treatment of pulmonary hypertension, new developments in mechanical assist devices, heart and lung transplantation, and interventional cardiac catheterization.
• Examines issues affecting adults with congenital heart disease.

Ross Ungerleider, MD is co-director of the Pediatric and Congenital Heart Program, is the most experienced pediatric heart surgeon in North Carolina and a leader in pediatric cardiovascular surgery. Dr. Ungerleider is a national expert with over 25 years of experience in pediatric cardiothoracic surgery and one of just 60 cardiac surgeons in the United States certified in congenital heart surgery by the American Board of Thoracic Surgery. He is an expert in all congenital heart surgery procedures and has special expertise in aortic valve surgery and hypoplastic left heart syndrome.