Established in 1929, the Childrens Hospital Los Angeles Heart Center is one of the largest pediatric cardiovascular diagnostic and treatment centers on the West Coast. CHLA has been mending "broken hearts" since 1939 when it became the first center in the west to perform pediatric heart surgery. The Heart Institute at CHLA provides comprehensive care to the fetus, newborn, infant, child and adolescent with congenital or acquired heart disease, offering virtually every advanced diagnostic and treatment modality available today.

Miracle Children of CHLA's Heart Institute

For six-month-old Alex Aquilar, Jr., he received a miracle for his Christmas present in 1997 - a new heart. Diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy; in lay terms, a "heart too big for a child his age," which could have proved fatal if it hadn't been for the transplantation by CHLA Heart Transplant Team, headed by internationally renowned transplant surgeon Dr. Vaughn Starnes, M.D.  Also under Dr. Starnes' direction, a major first was performed - the world's first double-lobe transplant from living parents to their birth child, completed in 1993.
 

As an infant, Taylor Williamson was in desperate need of a lung transplant by Dr. Starnes.
	Today she's a happy and healthy two-year-old, thanks to Dr. Starnes and Childrens Hospital Los Angeles - Heart Institute.

Physicians at the CHLA Heart Institute perform more than 700 operative procedures annually on all heart conditions appropriate for surgery.