St. Louis Children's Hospital Critical Care Transport Team

Abstract

From its humble beginnings in 1879 in a converted apartment house at 2834 Franklin Avenue, St. Louis Children's Hospital has emerged as a world class leader in pediatric medicine. Today, St. Louis Children's Hospital has 250 acute care beds, 26 pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) beds, 12 cardiac intensive care unit beds, and 75 neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) beds. Children's Hospital has the largest pediatric lung transplant program in the world and has active liver, heart, kidney, and bone marrow transplant programs. The hospital is also a level I pediatric trauma center and provides care for severely burned children. Recently, the hospital used an artificial lung as a bridge to lung transplantation in a 2-year-old suffering from pulmonary hypertension. The young patient survived his ordeal, thus becoming the youngest patient in the world to benefit from the Novalung. Children's routinely uses the Berlin Heart as a bridge to transplantation in very young children.