New cardiovascular intensive care unit offers specialized heart care for kids

SAN DIEGO, August 14, 2013 -  Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego today celebrated the grand opening of its new state-of-the-art Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit (CVICU).

Located in a renovated patient care area inside the Rose Pavilion, the CVICU will provide the highest level of care to patients from newborns to adults, be staffed by critical care physicians and nurses from the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) and Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), and have the most advanced equipment to help patients get well.

A full range of cardiac intensive care services will be provided, including advanced patient monitoring, lab testing, radiology exams and ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation), technology that circulates blood so that oxygen can be supplied to the body.

The CVICU will also be ideally suited for heart transplant patients; Rady Children’s surgeons will perform the first-ever pediatric heart transplants at the hospital in the near future.

Rady Children's Heart Institute is one of the busiest cardiac centers in California.  Doctors performed nearly 500 surgeries in fiscal year 2012.   Rady Children's has been ranked among the nation's best children's hospitals for four years in a row by U.S. News & World Report in Cardiology and Cardiovascular Surgery.

The newly renovated space offers Rady Children's the unique opportunity to provide continued excellence in cardiac care to children and their families, now and for generations to come. 

 

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