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Alan H. Friedman, MD: Watching over young hearts
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Name: Alan H. Friedman, MD
Title: Professor and associate chair, Department
of Pediatrics; director, pediatric residency program;
director, pediatric echocardiography laboratory.
Area of expertise: Diagnosis and management of
fetal and neonatal cardiovascular disease.
Place of birth: Detroit, Mich.
Age: 46.
College: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Med School: Wayne State University School of
Medicine, Detroit.
Training: Residency and chief residency in pediatrics
at Children’s Memorial Hospital, Chicago;
fellowship in pediatric cardiology at Yale.
Family: Married to Jennifer Friedman, who is
pursuing a master’s degree in library science; four
children: Sydney, 15; Jake, 13; Tess, 7; Dylan, 21
months.
What is most challenging to you in academic
medicine? Balancing the short-term solutions to
difficult issues, with the long-term challenge of
moving important clinical and educational programs
forward.
What is most rewarding? Working with residents
and fellows. It’s stimulating because they’re
extremely bright and it’s exciting for me to be
challenged and pushed by them.
What do you like most about your practice?
Working with children of all ages and their families
toward achieving the healthiest cardiovascular
outcomes; helping children with congenital
heart disease integrate into the normal activities
of childhood and adolescence.
Personal interests or pastimes? Visiting NYC
with my family and watching as many Detroit
Tigers games as I can.
Last book read: Clemente: The Passion and Grace
of Baseball’s Last Hero, by David Maraniss.
What would you do to improve our clinical
environment if you had a magic wand? In
many ways, the wand has begun to wave as the
Children’s Hospital and the medical school have
worked together in remarkably effective ways to
energize faculty recruitments and strengthen vital
programs. With our growth, however, comes
the necessity for more space in which to care for
our pediatric patients. |
 Forty years ago, many parents
of babies born with a congenital
heart defect received
a grim diagnosis, but today
Alan H. Friedman, MD, can
offer them much better news.
“Early and accurate diagnosis,
coupled with our modern
treatment, catheterizaion laboratory techniques
and surgical expertise, have really revolutionized
our field,” he says.
Friedman, who has directed the pediatric echocardiography
laboratory at Yale-New Haven
Children’s Hospital since 1994, spends much of
his time immersed in the non-invasive imaging of
cardiac disease in children. Using echocardiography,
which he calls his field’s “workhorse,” he and
his colleagues diagnose and treat congenital heart
disease, the most common of all congenital defects
in children. “Just about 1 percent of all newborns
have some abnormality of cardiac structure,” he
says. It can be very mild, such as a small ventricular
septal defect, or much more significant, such
as transposition of the great arteries. “Prior to
the modern era of pediatric cardiac surgery, these
were lesions that were not survivable, but nowadays
with early diagnosis and surgery, our patient
population with congenital heart disease has a
greater than 95 percent survivability.”
The newest tools in Friedman’s arsenal include
intracardiac echocardiography, in which tiny
probes are placed into the vessels of small patients
to examine the heart, and 3D echocardiography,
which creates three-dimensional images that are
extremely useful in surgical preparation and assessing
cardiac structure. Advances in diagnosis
and treatment have meant that Friedman has witnessed
a sea change in outcomes for his patients
during his 16-year career. “It’s been a great time to
be a pediatric cardiologist,” he says.
- Originally published in the June 2007 issue of Yale Practice.
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