Taking Pediatric Cardiology to New Heights

Five-year-old Khori was born with a congenital heart defect and has already undergone two open-heart surgeries in her short life. After her second surgery, it was clear she would need a new heart, so she was placed on the transplant list. 

Her mother Tomara was shocked when just three months later she received the call that a match had been found for her little girl. 

“When he said he was a member of the transplant team and that they’d found a match, I literally almost fell to the floor. I just started crying. They were happy tears, of course,” Tomara said. 

“Having all of our services housed in one place has always been a dream. It just makes sense when the day-to-day care of our patients is dependent on interactions with multiple divisions.” — Scott Baldwin, MD, Chief of the Division of Pediatric Cardiology and Co-Director of the Pediatric Heart Institute 

Khori is one of the nearly 500 children who will receive a heart operation at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt annually. 

And now, thanks to the generous contributions of donors like you, children like Khori have a brand-new, state-of-the-art pediatric cardiology floor to meet all their needs in one place. The addition of the new tenth floor of Children’s Hospital encompasses all inpatient cardiology services, including the cardiac intensive care unit (ICU) and the cardiac step-down unit. 

Part of the Growing to New Heights campaign, the new 10th floor cardiology unit will make for a better patient experience as well as more positive outcomes. 

Your gifts help make innovations and advancements like this possible, ultimately changing the future of pediatric medicine.