If you are a parent of a child whose heart is not functioning well due to cardiomyopathy (a weakened heart muscle) or congenital heart disease, you need an expert team that you can trust. At the Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital, we offer personalized, innovative, and compassionate care for young patients and their families.

Our Pediatric Advanced Cardiac Therapies (PACT) Program consists of a highly experienced medical and surgical team, which works closely with each family to ensure that your child receives the best advanced cardiac therapy option for them. We place great emphasis on family-centered care to educate and communicate about your loved one's heart condition.

If your child’s heart weakens and medical treatment options are not working, a ventricular assist device or a heart transplantation may be the best option. We understand that this can be overwhelming for children and their families, but at Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital, we are there for you. You and your child will benefit from a world-renowned, multidisciplinary pediatric heart team, including social and emotional support from a team of nurses, pharmacists, dietician, and social workers, before, during, and after these advanced therapies.

Conditions We Treat

The PACT program at Mount Sinai offers comprehensive, multi-disciplinary care to all children and families with a broad spectrum of cardiac conditions:

Pediatric Cardiomyopathy
Cardiomyopathy is a disease of the heart muscle, and we are experts in caring for children with many different forms of this disease, such as:

• Dilated cardiomyopathy
• Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy
• Restrictive cardiomyopathy
• Left ventricular non-compaction (LVNC) cardiomyopathy
• Arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia or cardiomyopathy (ARVC)

Our program is a specialty center certified by the Children’s Cardiomyopathy Foundation. Our medical and surgical teams use a broad range of therapies, treatments, and procedures to assist your child’s heart. We also use the expertise of our cardiovascular genetics and metabolic program as a diagnostic tool to understand the origins and best possible treatment for your child’s condition.

Pediatric Heart Failure
If your child’s heart is not working properly, due to cardiomyopathy or congenital heart disease, our team expertly times medical and catheter intervention and customizes therapies to maintain your child's health. Our team has treated hundreds of children with heart muscle weakness.  

In addition to the medical therapies used to support a weakened heart, temporary surgical options are sometimes needed. Some of these treatments include extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), and ventricular assist devices such as Berlin Heart®, PediMag™ or CentriMag™, or HeartMate 3™, which support the circulation when the heart is no longer able.

Our specialized care team provides the therapies to support the function of the weakened heart to improve your child's outcome. We work closely with other specialists, as needed, to make sure that your child’s health and other vital organ functions are the best they can be. For instance, we often work with our kidney, lung, and liver colleagues to make sure your child is set up for success.

Pediatric Cardio-Oncology
As cancer treatment has evolved, survivors are living longer. However, one of the major side effects of cancer therapies can be impaired heart function. While these patients rarely need a heart transplant, our team works closely with the Oncology team at Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital to make sure these young patients receive the multidisciplinary care they need.

As these patients grow up, our team works closely with adult cardio-oncologists to allow for seamless and easy transitions from the pediatric to the adult world and make sure no one is lost to follow-up in their care.

Pediatric Heart Transplantation
When medical therapy is no longer effective, and the heart is failing, transplantation may be the best option. Our Medical Director, Jacqueline Lamour, MD, is one of the most experienced pediatric heart transplant cardiologists in the tristate area. Over the past 25 years, she has managed more than 350 children with heart transplants, providing expert care at all stages.

Our program has a 100 percent one-year patient survival rate for pediatric heart transplants, better than the national rate and the best in New York State. (Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients, January 9, 2024)

These are the keys to our success:

• Thorough education: As a family-centered hospital, our team places great emphasis on educating parents and family members about every step of the process. Our transplant social workers and child-life specialists are always available to help parents, caregivers and siblings understand and cope with the transplant process.
• Coordinated multidisciplinary care: Children undergoing heart transplantation need care from pediatric specialists in cardiovascular surgery and cardiac transplant medicine, critical care, noninvasive imaging, interventional catheterization, infectious disease, and immunology and may need electrophysiology, nephrology, gastroenterology, neurology and other pediatric disciplines. At Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital, you'll find them all conveniently located under one roof.
• Vigilant post-transplant monitoring: Our transplant cardiologists are authorities in using immunosuppressive medications to prevent transplant rejection, while minimizing infection and drug toxicities. They tailor medical and interventional therapy for your child and coordinate specialty care with other pediatric experts, if necessary.

Leaders in Cardiac Research for Children

We are national leaders in research on children’s heart conditions, treatment, and outcomes. Our researchers work with industry to study heart failure drugs in children and presently have ongoing trials. Our cardiologists also participate in national multicenter children's cardiac research studies across a broad spectrum of topics.

Our cardiologists hold leadership positions in:

• The ACTION (Advanced Cardiac Therapies Improving Outcomes) Network, devoted to improving care for patients living with heart failure
• The International Cardio-Oncology Society
• International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT)
• The Pediatric Heart Transplant Society
• United Network of Organ Sharing

Jacqueline M. Lamour, MD
Medical Director, Cardiomyopathy, Heart Failure and Transplantation
Email: jacqueline.lamour@mssm.edu

Neha Bansal, MD
Pediatric Heart Failure and Transplant Cardiologist
Email: neha.bansal@mssm.edu

Christyn Chase, FNP
Pediatric Heart Transplant Nurse Practitioner
Email: Christy.chase@mssm.edu