Hypoplastic left heart syndrome

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Departments and specialties

Mayo Clinic has one of the largest and most experienced practices in the United States, with campuses in Arizona, Florida and Minnesota. Staff skilled in dozens of specialties work together to ensure quality care and successful recovery.

Departments that treat this condition

Research

Researchers at Mayo Clinic study hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS) and other types of congenital heart defects and congenital heart diseases. The researchers aim to find new treatments and surgeries for people with these conditions. Research topics include imaging and outcomes, human genetics, and regenerative medicine strategies. Mayo Clinic healthcare professionals also are gathering personal and family histories, heart images, tissue and cell samples, and genomic information from people with HLHS and their family members to further study the condition.

Specialized research

Mayo Clinic's Todd and Karen Wanek Family Program for Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome is a specialized center. It's dedicated to discovering new ways to diagnose and treat HLHS. Topics of research include:

  • Using stem cells to strengthen the heart.
  • Searching for genes that may be responsible for hypoplastic left heart syndrome.

Read more about research in the Todd and Karen Wanek Family Program for Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS).

Publications

See a list of publications about hypoplastic left heart syndrome by Mayo Clinic doctors on PubMed, a service of the National Library of Medicine.

Pioneering Treatment for Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome

Mayo Clinic Using Regenerative Medicine to Find Answers for Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome

I'm Tim Nelson. I'm the director of the Todd and Karen Wanek family program for hypoplastic left heart research. This hypoplastic left heart research program here at Mayo Clinic comprises of nearly 60 people that work across the enterprise in multiple different areas of basic science all the way to clinical practice.

Our research program is dedicated to children with congenital heart disease with a condition specifically known as hypoplastic left heart. These children are born without a half of their heart and literally require three open heart surgeries to allow their heart to function and be compatible with life. Unfortunately, these hearts are not strong enough to live a normal sustain life span and the need for transplantation becomes real.

Our goal in our program is to invent and discover new regenerative stem cell-based therapies that allows us to rebuild these hearts make them bigger better and stronger with the goal of delaying or even preventing the need for cardiac transplantation down the road.

This multidisciplinary team works across the spectrum of research and discovery all the way to clinical applications. This multidisciplinary team is understanding the genetics, the natural history, and how stem cells work in these babies bodies when they are born. And by understanding the problem we then can engineer a solution. And today we have a clinical trial that we're currently offering patients where we actually use the umbilical cord blood collected at the time of their birth, processed and delivered into their heart muscle at the time of one of their elective surgeries. By doing this we hope that we can show that technology is safe in the congenital heart disease situation and ultimately be able to rebuild and strengthen the heart tissue to make it bigger, better and stronger. As we do the research in the lab and in the clinical setting, we're hoping to constantly improve and iteratively improve upon the cells that we use so we can grow better tissue that's stronger and more effective sustaining cardiac function and ultimately delaying in preventing transplant for children with hypoplastic left heart.

Research Profiles

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Hypoplastic left heart syndrome care at Mayo Clinic

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Diagnosis & treatmentCare at Mayo Clinic
Sept. 21, 2024
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Hypoplastic left heart syndrome

Research: It's all about patients

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Joseph Sirven, M.D., Professor of Neurology, Mayo Clinic: Mayo's mission is about the patient. The patient comes first. So the mission and research here is to advance how we can best help the patient, how to make sure the patient comes first in care. So in many ways, it's a cycle. It can start with as simple as an idea worked on in a laboratory, brought to the patient bedside, and if everything goes right — and let's say it's helpful or beneficial — then brought on as a standard approach. And I think that is one of the unique characteristics of Mayo's approach to research — that patient-centeredness — that really helps to put it in its own spotlight.