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Inpatient Care: Cardiothoracic ICU (CTICU)

Inpatient Care: Cardiothoracic ICU (CTICU)

The 30-bed Cardiothoracic ICU (CTICU) of Rady Children’s Heart Institute provides cardiac inpatient care for people of all ages (from newborns to adults) with congenital or acquired heart disease. It is a unique space within the Hospital solely devoted to all levels of inpatient cardiac care, from admission to discharge, with a focus on family-centered care.

In order to meet the needs of all patients, the unit consists of two components: a CTICU and a cardiac step-down unit (CSU). Staffed by critical care cardiac physicians, advanced practitioners and nurses, 24 hours a day, the CTICU cares for cardiology and cardiovascular surgery patients when they are most critically ill. Many patients are admitted to the unit within hours of being born. The CTICU also cares for patients with heart failure, heart transplants and those requiring assist devices. As patients recover from their critical illness, they progress to the CSU, where their care is continued under the supervision of cardiologists and cardiology advanced practitioners until they are ready to be discharged home.

Newborn infants with heart disease may also be cared for under the close supervision of neonatologists, who are experts in the care of infants, in collaboration with the cardiac team. All 30 beds in the CTICU are capable of functioning as a CTICU-level bed or CSU bed, assuring an appropriate level of care based on the needs of the patient. To ensure continuity of care, the teams that care for patients prior to their procedures continue to care for them in the unit afterwards. And since these teams care for all cardiac patients admitted to the unit, patients who return to the Hospital for subsequent procedures will recognize the doctors and nurses.

A full range of cardiac services and critical care services are provided, including:

  • Intensive patient monitoring
  • Lab testing
  • Radiology exams and cardiac imaging
  • Ventilation, invasive and non-invasive
  • Renal replacement therapies, including peritoneal and hemodialysis
  • Advanced life support therapies, including ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation), an advanced technology that circulates blood so that oxygen can be supplied to the body when the heart or lungs are not working

Patients also receive dietary services, social services and child life services.

The state-of-the-art unit was created to care for the growing number of cardiac patients requiring specialized services and advanced technology. Our renowned Cardiovascular Surgery team performs about 400-500 operations each year.

For information on all of our Critical Care services, click here.

CTICU Team

Rohit Rao, M.D., M.B.A.,
Medical Director, CTICU and Pulmonary Hypertension Program

Cardiovascular Surgery

John Nigro, M.D.
Division Chief, Cardiovascular Surgery

Srujan Ganta, M.D.

Cardiac Intensivists

Thomas Do, M.D., M.S.

Harjot Bassi, M.D.

Shilpa Vellore Govardhan, M.D.

Dana Mueller, M.D.

Jesse Stringer, M.D.

David Werho, M.D.

Inpatient Cardiologists

Juliana Gomez-Arostegui, M.D., M.P.H.

Aamisha Gupta, M.D.

Neonatologists

Denise Suttner, M.D.
Director, Neonatal Cardiac Intensive Care Unit
Director, San Diego Regional ECMO Program

Brian Lane, M.D.
Director, High-Risk Infant Follow-Up Clinic

Jose Honold, M.D.
Director, Neuro-NICU Program; Director, Rady Children’s Hospital Emergency Neonatal Transport Team; Medical Director

Jeanne M. Carroll, M.D.

Nathaly Sweeney, M.D., M.P.H.

Nursing Leadership

Lindsey Ryan, Ph.D., R.N., Director, Cardiothoracic ICU & ECMO