This award celebrates the innovation and collaboration that are foundational to the success of UT Southwestern Medical Center. It recognizes a group of clinical faculty and staff who have partnered to create, develop, and sustain an innovative program that significantly advances our ability to improve patient care.

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Pediatric Advanced Cardiac Care Program 

Ryan Butts, M.D.

Professor of Pediatrics

Ryan Davies, M.D.

Professor of Cardiovascular & Thoracic Surgery
Director of Pediatric Heart Transplantation and Mechanical Circulatory Support 

An extremely sick child is every parent’s nightmare, but it is the reality many families face. At UT Southwestern, the Pediatric Advanced Cardiac Care Program has been helping people shoulder that burden, saving infants and children for about 30 years. Today it remains one of the top programs in the country and accepts many of the nation’s most complex cases. Last year the surgical team performed 33 pediatric heart transplants, the second highest number seen at a U.S. children’s hospital in the last three decades.

But case counts make up only part of the story – this program has the results to match. In 2022 and 2023, the survival rate of patients one-year post-transplant was 100% under the leadership of Dr. Ryan Butts and Dr. Ryan Davies.

While families anxiously await news of their child’s status on the transplant list, they can trust that their loved ones will receive the full might of resources that UTSW has to offer. This includes everything from complex supportive procedures to the care and attention of the region’s most renowned experts specializing in cardiac surgery, cardiology, intensive care, anesthesiology, transplant immunology, infectious diseases, and more. With Drs. Butts and Davies at the helm, the program has upheld rigorous standards to ensure the highest quality of care, including standardized processes for health monitoring, structured presentation of transplant candidates, a dedicated review of the waitlist each week, and thrice-weekly patient discussion meetings.

“Transplant results are scrutinized more than almost any other outcome, and the stress on teams is high,” said one physician nominator. “Yet when a program achieves the results that this one has, it inspires everyone on the team, gives a real sense of purpose to those who care for children, and adds prestige to the institution. The biggest winners, of course, are the patients and families who trust us with their care.”

And as the nominator points out, the success of this program did not happen by chance. Drs. Davies and Butts and their team effectively strategized plans to deliver the best cardiac care to patients. They expanded the pool of donors for pediatric patients and improved existing practices. For example, their team innovated with the use of continuous flow pumps as an alternative to a riskier pulsatile mechanical circulatory support device, and data shows it dramatically reduced the incidence of thromboembolic complications.

“This approach represents swimming against the current, so to speak, but has been incredibly successful,” said another physician who nominated the program for this award. “The Pediatric Advanced Cardiac Care team has now demonstrated such excellent results that they are constantly fielding inquiries from U.S. and international centers that wish to emulate this groundbreaking and courageous approach.”

UTSW also expanded its use of ventricular assist devices (VADs), a crucial but often complicated method of supporting cardiac pump function for wait-listed transplant patients. Physicians on the medical staff have honed novel techniques and successfully placed VADs in some of the smallest and most vulnerable patients; in many cases smaller than any other center in the world. In fact, UTSW now runs one of the largest pediatric VAD programs in the country, with excellent outcomes among 75 patients over the past five years.

In their words: The Pediatric Advanced Cardiac Care (PACC) team is thrilled to receive this well-deserved recognition. We are particularly proud to be honored with the Program Development Award, as it underscores our greatest strength – a multidisciplinary and collaborative approach dedicated to providing the best care for children with heart failure, including medical management, ventricular assist devices, and transplantation.

Our commitment to deliver a high quality of care while redefining the standard of care for children with heart failure nationwide has truly set us apart.

Our remarkable successes stem from our innovative approaches to managing heart failure in children, coupled with the unwavering dedication of the entire PACC team, including surgeons, cardiologists, nurse coordinators, advanced practice providers, social workers, dietitians, child life specialists, chaplains, psychologists, administrators, and many others. Moreover, these achievements would not have been possible without the collaboration and support of the entire Heart Center. We graciously accept this award as a testament to the profound impact we’ve made on our patients’ lives through our exceptional team-based approach to care.