Le Bonheur Children’s Heart Transplant team features some of the country’s most experienced experts in pediatric heart transplantation.
Heart Transplant Program
Our program is approved by the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) and provides comprehensive care for children with end-stage heart disease, including those with single ventricle defects, and all forms of heart failure/cardiomyopathy. The mechanical circulatory support/ventricular assist device program provides a means for patients to recover or to be bridged to transplantation when they are on the transplant wait list.
Our Heart Transplant Team
Our heart transplant team includes cardiothoracic transplant surgeons, heart failure/transplant cardiologists, nurses and other experts in the care of infants, children and adolescents with congenital heart disease and cardiomyopathies.
- Transplant Program Surgical Director Umar Boston, MD, has performed more than 40 transplants in the past five years. He most recently served at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, one of the biggest transplant centers in the country.
- Transplant Program Medical Director Jeffrey A. Towbin, MD, has cared for more than 200 transplant patients in throughout his career and is an expert in heart failure/cardiomyopathies. He most recently served as chief of cardiology at Texas Children’s Hospital and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.
The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) gave Le Bonheur’s surgical heart program its highest three-star rating in its STS Congenital Heart Surgery Database Feedback Report. The rating, given to only 11 centers in its most recent report, is based on STS’s mortality risk model, which takes into account the hospital’s number of actual mortalities versus expected mortalities for a certain illness or condition.
