Surgical and minimally invasive treatments

Minimally invasive treatments

Frank Ing with baby Mateo and his parents.

The Pediatric Heart Center at UC Davis Children’s Hospital offers expertise in minimally invasive interventions for infants diagnosed with congenital heart disease. Our treatments address a variety of defects, including:

  • Hypoplastic left heart syndrome
  • Tetralogy of Fallot
  • Pulmonary artresia
  • Transposition of the great arteries
  • Truncus arteriosus
  • Pectus excavatum and pectus carinatum

A closer look
  • Cardiac catheterization

    Some conditions may be treated using catheters — thin, flexible, narrow tubes threaded through blood vessels to the heart — rather than traditional, invasive cardiothoracic surgery. Cardiac catheterization can be used to make repairs, like closing holes in the heart muscle or removing obstructions from the blood vessels, or to place stents in narrowed or blocked blood vessels to keep them open.

    More about cardiac catheterization
  • Cardiac electrophysiology

    Children with an abnormal heart rhythm (an arrhythmia) can be treated with cardiac electrophysiology. Pediatric cardiac electrophysiology uses radiofrequency catheter ablation to treat cardiac arrhythmias, disrupting areas of the heart that are the source of the electrical irregularities.

  • Echocardiography-guided catheterization

    Echocardiography can be combined with cardiac catheterization to implant a small medical device to treat infants with patent ductus arteriosus (PDA), a heart defect in which the ductus arteriosus, a blood vessel in the heart, does not close spontaneously after birth.

    A thin catheter can be inserted into a blood vessel in the groin area and moved up into the heart guided by echo images to locate and close the PDA without the need for traditional angiography, which can pose more risks for infants.

Referrals and appointments

Clinic locations and appointments
Families have access to our full-service Pediatric Heart Center along with the added convenience of six outreach clinic locations. 

For referring physicians, please call our patient referrals phone number at 916-734-3456 for assistance with pediatric cardiology services or use on our online referral form.

Pediatric Heart Center - main clinic location

77 Cadillac Drive, Suite 101
Sacramento, CA

View map and directions

Sacramento clinic appointments

916-734-7439

Outreach clinics

We have 6 convenient locations in the surrounding communities.

View outreach clinic locations

Outreach clinic appointments

916-734-3456