Heart

If your child’s heart is struggling to pump blood, we’re here for you. Heart failure can affect anyone, including children, and may be caused by a birth defect, infection, or other medical problems. Your child’s treatment depends on their age, symptoms, and health. We work with you and your family to provide complete care, including preventative care through genetic testing and collaboration with experts. Together, we aim to treat heart failure early to avoid or delay the need for a heart transplant. Our team includes doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other specialists dedicated to helping your child live their healthiest life.

Causes of heart failure include: 

• Heart defect (congenital)
• Heart muscle disease (cardiomyopathy)
• Infections including bacterial endocarditis, rheumatic fever and myocarditis
• Irregular heartbeats (cardiac arrhythmia)
• High blood pressure (hypertension)

Symptoms of heart failure include:

• Shortness of breath or heavy breathing
• Feeling more tired than usual
• Needing to take frequent rest breaks while playing with friends
• Not growing
• Swelling of the legs, ankles, eyelids, face or abdomen
• Cough and congestion in the lungs
• Sweating, falling asleep when feeding or becoming too tired to eat (babies)

Our heart failure program specializes in:

• Cardiac Anticoagulation
  Many children need blood thinners (anticoagulants) because heart failure carries a higher risk of blood clots. The anticoagulation program provides long term care for children on blood thinners. 
• Cardiogenetics
  Cardiomyopathy is a disease of the heart muscle that makes it harder for the heart to pump blood to the rest of the body. Many forms of this disease are due to a genetic abnormality that makes the heart muscle weak or stiff. Our close relationship with cardiac genetic counselors allows us to offer you the testing that's needed to help find the cause of the disease.  
• Cardio-Oncology
  Our oncology team helps prevent, diagnose and treat cancer. We work closely with the pediatric oncologists (cancer specialists) and the Late Effects Oncology Clinic at Intermountain Children’s Health to help children at risk of heart failure due to past cancer treatments.
• Cardiorenal Collaborative
  Since many children have kidney problems related to their heart conditions, our team works closely with the Intermountain Children's Health nephrologists. This way your child can receive the best care from the best teams.
• Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) and Neuromuscular Collaborative
  We work closely with the neuromuscular team at Primary Children’s Hospital and the University of Utah to treat children at risk of heart disease due to underlying neuromuscular conditions. This allows us to give your child the care team they need.
• Pediatric Ventricular Assist Device (VAD) Program
  VADs are surgically placed, electrically powered heart pumps that work with your child's heart to improve blood flow. We are nationally recognized in the latest use of VADs and are leaders within the ACTION Network, which is a group of 35 centers focused on children needing VAD support. In our program, many children on VADs are able to recover outside of the ICU.  
• UCHAMP-EP Clinic
  We have a combined UCHAMP-EP clinic for children at risk for both heart failure and arrhythmias, including those with internal cardiac defibrillators (ICD). This clinic provides your child with the benefits of two specialized teams in one visit.

Treatments include:

• Pacemaker
• Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy
• Mechanical support devices
• Heart Transplant

Medicines used to treat this condition may include:

• Water Pill (diuretic)
• ACE (angiotensin-converting enzyme) Inhibitors
• Beta Blockers

Pediatric Cardiomyopathy Registry (PCMR) Center of Excellence
Since 2017, Primary Children's Hospital  has been recognized by the Pediatric Cardiomyopathy Registry as a national center of excellence in the care of children with cardiomyopathy.

Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Center of Excellence
Primary Children's Hospital is the pediatric arm of two centers recognized nationally to provide excellence in care for patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (Intermountain Medical Center and the University of Utah).