Riley Heart Center

The Riley Heart Center offers comprehensive care for the most complex fetal heart conditions. Many of our pediatric cardiologists have specialized training in fetal echocardiogram and work closely with an expansive team to diagnosis and manage congenital heart defects in unborn babies. We provide diagnosis, counseling, and management of congenital heart defects with a team that includes obstetrics, maternal-fetal medicine, genetics, neonatology, and cardiothoracic surgery.

As a partner in the Fetal Center, our fetal cardiac specialists participate in multidisciplinary care conferences to build coordinated treatment plans for deliveries. Our goal is to develop a treatment plan that benefits both mother and fetus to obtain the most optimal outcomes. We also keep you informed every step of the way with clinical notes.

In addition, we provide support for neurodevelopmental conditions that occur because of a fetal diagnosis and offer a home monitoring program for follow-up care. Genetic testing and counseling also assess “why” congenital heart disease has occurred and helps with discussions about future risks of having a child with congenital heart disease.

If a complex cardiac diagnosis requires immediate intervention, the Maternity Tower at Riley Hospital for Children provides the highest level of care for both mother and baby with operating rooms that adjoin delivery rooms.

Learn more about our Fetal Cardiology Program.

For neonates with congenital heart disease, Riley Children’s and the Riley Heart Center offer a best practice model built on shared management among cardiac intensivists, neonatologists, cardiologists, and cardiothoracic surgeons. Riley Children’s is one of only two programs in the country that integrates complete neonatal care seamlessly with cardiac intensive care.

To decrease mortality for babies born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS) and other conditions, our home monitoring program assists babies with single ventricle physiology, transplant or ventricular assist devices, and cardiomyopathy or heart failure.

Through a novel, web-based iPad program, parents can track and record vital signs, enabling the cardiac medical team to evaluate information in real-time. Parents with questions can directly contact an on-call nurse 24/7. Riley Children's is the only children’s hospital in Indiana to offer this program that’s backed by extensive research.

With the only comprehensive cardiovascular genetics program in Indiana, the Riley Heart Center provides complete genetic evaluation of all family members, along with coordinated heart screenings.

This multidisciplinary program for aortic disease includes both clinical care and research in the wide spectrum of aortopathies in children and young adults. At Riley Children’s, every baby is evaluated by a physician medical geneticist and rapid whole-genome sequencing offers fast and accurate diagnosis of genetic diseases.

As a Pulmonary Hypertension Association-accredited program, Riley Children’s offers inpatient and outpatient consultation by a cardiologist, pulmonologist, and dedicated nursing team.

Our program participates in multiple clinical trials to evaluate the safety and efficacy of medications. We also engage in collaborative research with other centers to improve care quality and elevate standards of care.

Our comprehensive inpatient program provides seamless, personalized care coordination for patients and families across the care continuum from admission through outpatient follow-up. Led by cardiac nurses, inpatient navigation has decreased length of stay, reduced readmissions and improved patient satisfaction.

To help ensure a safe and efficient transition of care, our nurse navigators communicate with providers when patients are admitted, throughout the patient stay and at discharge. In addition, a customized discharge packet provides all details providers need to know to initiate follow-up care, and discharge instructions are available electronically in Cerner for providers with access to the EMR.

Babies that require cardiac surgical intervention after birth are directly admitted to the CVICU. This enables our highly skilled and experienced team of cardiac critical care physicians and neonatologists to provide the best care possible.

At Riley Hospital for Children, we also offer a step-down unit to care for patients with an improved outlook, but not yet ready to go home.

The Riley Heart Center offers free, live CME presentations via Microsoft Teams to provide physicians the opportunity to ask questions and interact with our highly skilled team in real time. To add the next Conversations with Riley Cardiology CME-event to your calendar or join live, visit live.iuhcpe.org.

With over three decades of experience providing heart transplants to infants, children, teens and young adults, IU Health Transplant at Riley Children’s, provides highly skilled and compassionate care. Our program works with the adult heart transplant program at IU Health to provide lifesaving heart transplants to adults with congenital heart disease that experience heart failure too. These two programs provide a seamless care process with outstanding long-term survival outcomes.