Adult Congenital Heart Program

It is estimated that currently there are as many adults living with congenital heart disease as children. This generation of adults is in need of highly specialized medical management expertise, which was the impetus to form the Yale-New Haven Adult Congenital Heart Program.

The new adult congenital heart population exists because of advances in diagnostic modalities, medical management, and pioneering reparative surgical techniques, many of which were developed at Yale-New Haven Children's Hospital to improve survival for children with this most common birth defect. Since the Children's Hospital is incorporated into the larger structure of the adult hospital at Yale-New Haven, the program provides a seamless transition from pediatric to adult care across inpatient and outpatient settings. Adult patients will benefit from the blended expertise of adult heart-failure management and traditional congenital cardiac care, along with coordinated access to a multidisciplinary health-care team. Patients are seen in an adult outpatient care environment.

The program includes specialists in adult cardiology and heart failure, adult pulmonology, high-risk obstetrics, interventional congenital cardiology, transplant, and cardiothoracic surgery. Experts in congenital electrophysiology, with state-of-the-art arrhythmia mapping systems, offer potential curative therapies for life-threatening arrhythmias, while the interventional program offers nonsurgical alternatives to common after effects of childhood surgeries. Surgeons who are expert in adult cardiology and congenital cardiac anatomy offer state-of-the-art treatment. Other members of the team include experts from the Yale Congestive Heart Failure & Transplantation Program, and the Yale High-Risk Obstetric and Fetal Cardiovascular Center.

The program's philosophy is to include the patient and family as an integral part of their cardiac and health care management, so specialists and patients develop a lifelong collaborative relationship. Physicians are highly sensitive to physical, emotional, and psychological needs, and designed the program to provide medical care for both cardiac and noncardiac concerns - such as management of fertility and pregnancy - and to provide comprehensive, holistic, family-centered services. Patient and family education are important components of the program. The program recently hired a dedicated social worker to aid in these efforts.

	Asnes, Jeremy David, MD	Assistant Professor of Pediatrics (Cardiology) and Assistant Clinical Professor of Nursing; Associate Director, Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory; Co-Director Pediatric Cardiology Fellowship Program	(203) 785-4081 Appts (203) 737-2786 Fax
	Copel, Joshua A, MD	Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences and of Pediatrics; Vice Chair, Obstetrics	(203) 785-5682 Appts (203) 785-3419 Fax
	Fahey, John Thomas, MD	Professor of Pediatrics (Cardiology) and Associate Clinical Professor of Nursing; Director, Cardiac Catherterization Laboratory; Director, Pediatric Exercise Laboratory; Director, Pediatric Cardiology Fellowship Program; Director, Adult Congenital Heart Program	(203) 785-4081 Appts (203) 737-2786 Fax
	Hellenbrand, William Eugene, MD	Professor of Pediatrics (Cardiology); Section Chief	(203) 785-4081 Appts (203) 737-2786 Fax
	Kirshbom, Paul, MD	Professor of Surgery (Section of Cardiac Surgery); Chief, Pediatric Cardiac Surgery	(203) 785-2702 Appts (203) 785-3346 Fax
	Kopf, Gary Sheldon, MD	Professor of Surgery (Section of Cardiac Surgery)	(203) 785-2702 Appts (203) 785-3346 Fax
	Rosenfeld, Lynda Ellen, MD	Associate Professor of Medicine (Cardiology) and of Pediatrics	(203) 785-4126 Appts (203) 785-6506 Fax

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