Cardiothoracic Anesthesia Team
When it comes to anesthesia and your child's surgery, you can rest assured the Heart Center at ACH has a Cardiothoracic Anesthesia Team is focused solely on their care. In fact, there is probably no other surgical specialty for which a successful outcome depends so much on good teamwork than congenital cardiothoracic surgery. For patients with heart disease, the pediatric cardiac anesthesiologist has a central role in coordinating team-based surgical care (including hand-holding, of course).
You may think an anesthesiologist is generally responsible for keeping the patient unconscious and pain-free while surgery is taking place, however, it is only part of the job in pediatric heart surgery. The pediatric cardiac anesthesiologist plays a much more critical part in facilitating surgery, monitoring physiologic parameters, optimizing and protecting vital organ function, controlling blood coagulation, and reducing the inflammatory response from cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB). Each part of the surgical procedure requires the specific attention of the cardiac anesthesiologist, whether that is the period of poor heart function during anesthesia before a heart transplantation, monitoring anesthesia and body functions during CPB, or assisting the patient's heart in separating from CPB. The cardiac anesthesiologist has the ability to monitor the patient's overall well-being so that the cardiac surgeon is allowed to give full attention to the operation.
Beyond caring for patients having cardiac surgery, our cardiac anesthesiologists also provide anesthesia care for infants, children, and adults with significant heart disease who are having procedures or other kinds of surgery ranging from sedation for MRI scans to general anesthesia for tonsillectomies or major orthopedic surgery. Patients with congenital heart disease often require anesthetic management tailored to their specific heart condition and specialized monitoring familiar to the cardiac anesthesiologist.
Choose the Heart Center at Arkansas Children's Hospital, where you'll be treated by some of the best pediatric cardiothoracic anesthesiologists available:
Pediatric Cardiothoracic Anesthesiologists:
For more information call 877-518-5858 (24/7).