Cardiac Anesthesia

Location 725 Welch Road, 1st floor Palo Alto, CA 94304

Phone: (650) 723-5728

Dr. M. Gail Boltz provides cardiac anesthesia services to the conjoined twins that were separated at Packard Children's Hospital in November 2007.

Anesthesia Care at the Children’s Heart Center

The pediatric cardiac anesthesiologists at the Children’s Heart Center provide anesthesia for patients undergoing the full range of cardiac procedures, from imaging studies that doctors use to diagnose disease, to open-heart surgery. Pediatric cardiac anesthesiologists are doctors specially trained in the administration of anesthesia to children with heart disease.
 
Your child is special—so we create an anesthesia plan specifically for your child’s condition. Before treatment begins, nurse practitioners (NPs) meet with you to coordinate care. It is their goal to combine tests or treatments, so your child undergoes the fewest possible anesthesia procedures.
 
Our anesthesia specialists can:

• Reduce your child’s need for breathing machines (ventilators). We want patients to breathe on their own as soon as possible after a test or treatment—without the help of a breathing machine. Our anesthesia techniques speed recovery and let you hear your child’s voice sooner.
  
  
• Help control pain. Our pain management specialists work with our intensive care team to help your child with pain after surgery. Pain specialists use a wide range of therapies, including acupuncture, massage and guided imagery. This reduces your child’s number of pain medicines and side effects.
  
  
• Ensure continuity of care. Our anesthesiologists provide anesthesia care for cardiac surgery and any type of surgery afterward. We also care for children during heart catheterization and other imaging studies. We encourage you to request the same anesthesiologist for all of your child’s procedures. When heart patients and parents work with the same team of physicians, children are more at ease and families bond with caregivers.
  
  
• Provide cutting-edge monitoring during surgery. Our doctors are pioneers in the field of brain oxygen monitoring. Monitoring brain oxygen levels can improve the safety of cardiopulmonary bypass, the process that adds oxygen to the blood and pumps it through the body during heart surgery. Ours is one of the few centers in the world where brain oxygen monitoring is routinely performed. This gives children the best possible opportunity for recovery. We also continue to monitor brain oxygen levels in the cardiovascular intensive care unit (CVICU) after surgery.

Learn More about Anesthesia

Patients: The Packard Kids Connection Web site prepares kids ages 5-12 to come to the hospital. Anesthesia is explained in the “Getting Treated” section.
 
Parents: To better understand what to expect on the day of your child’s procedure, visit Emmi®, our anesthesia online education program.

The Pediatric Cardiac Anesthesia Team

Chandra Ramamoorthy, MD Director of Cardiac Anesthesia

Gregory B. Hammer, MD; Calvin Kuan, MD; Chloe Journel, RN, MSN, PNP; M. Gail Boltz, MD; Ellen Bair, MS, CPNP; Komal Kamra, MD; Glyn “Jumbo” Williams, MD. Not pictured: Lisa Faberowski, MD, Ethan Jackson, MD and Manchula Navaratnam