Total anomalous pulmonary venous return. Hypoplastic left heart syndrome. Truncus arteriosus. Terms like these speak volumes to the parents of children with severe congenital heart defects.
Heart defects occur in about 1 in 100 babies, or about 40,000 U.S. newborns per year. While any such problem can be terrifying, the surgeries required for the most severe defects are particularly risky, and the road to a healthy childhood is especially long.
Some hospitals have more experience than others in treating the most severe forms of congenital heart disease, and those are where many parents turn if their child needs a high-risk operation. Studies show the more experience a hospital and its surgical team have in performing high-risk operations, the better outcomes tend to be.
To help this subset of CHD parents identify a hospital that may be best for their child, U.S. News compiled a list of 30 hospitals that meet the following two criteria.
Each medical center listed:
— Earned a top-50 ranking in the 2022-2023 Best Hospitals for Pediatric Cardiology & Heart Surgery rankings.
— And scored high or very high for the number of high-risk pediatric heart surgeries it has handled, which means it performed at least 300 such operations in the last four years for which U.S. News has data.
Each hospital’s corresponding ranking among the top 50 Best Hospitals for Pediatric Cardiology & Heart Surgery is also shown in the left-hand column below to provide parents with context.
30 Best Hospitals for Children With Severe Congenital Heart Disease
Ben Harder oversees methodology and data analysis for U.S. News & World Report’s portfolio of data-driven patient decision-support tools, including the Best Hospitals and Best Children’s Hospitals rankings, Best Nursing Homes ratings, and searchable Find a Doctor directory. A frequent speaker on topics related to quality measurement and public reporting, Harder is a healthcare journalist whose work has appeared in BMJ, JAMA, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, National Geographic News, Science News, USA Today, the Washington Post and other publications. A Science News cover story he wrote about the use of maggots in medicine was anthologized in Best American Science Writing 2005. He is a graduate of Harvard University, where he served as the first Editor in Chief of Let’s Go Publications, a publisher of travel guides. He completed a John S. and James L. Knight Foundation journalism fellowship at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2002 and has been an editor at U.S. News since 2007. He tweets @benharder.
More from U.S. News
Drugs That Can Threaten Heart Health
10 Items to Pack in Your Hospital Bag
Best Hospitals for Children With Severe Congenital Heart Disease originally appeared on usnews.com
Update 06/14/22: This story was previously published at an earlier date and has been updated with new ranking results.