Novel Strategies for Single Ventricle Management

Sitaram Emani is Associate Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Complex Biventricular Repair Program at Boston Children's Hosptial. 

I am a pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon in Salt Lake City, Utah.  I have focused my clinical and research work around pediatric health services, quality and outcomes research. Broadly, I have been interested in understanding the impact of metabolic and inflammatory derangements on clinical diseases, particulary in pediatric heart failure.  I am currently studying universal pathogen detection and host immune transcriptomics using RNA-seq and a rapid genomic anlysis tool developed at the University of Utah, Taxonomer, to improve diagnosis of acute viral myocarditis in children. I am also heavily involved in pediatric outcomes research and I'm currently our center's surgical representative to the NHLBI-sponsored Pediatric Heart Network (PHN) study group.  I have participated in multiple national collaborative research trials and writing groups focusing on practice variation surrounding the bidirectional Glenn and Fontan stages of single ventricle palliation. I serve as surgical lead for our Heart Center's quality improvement team and I also serve as the cardic representative for our hospital's surgical quality improvement team.  We currently have 19 ongoing clinical quality improvement projects in our heart center.  We have studied and developed a postoperative chyolothorax protocol in children undergoing cardiac surgery which has been implemented in an multi-institutional study through the Pediatric Cardiac Critical Care collaborative.   Clinically, my area of focus is the aortic root in children, specifially the Ross operation.  We will hosting an annual Ross training symposium in collaboration with Cedars Sinai hospital.  Aditionally, I have developed a clinical interest in peripheral pulmonary artery reconstruction and other complex pulmonary artery reconstrcutions.