Kids Heart Research

Key Philosophy

The Heart Centre for Children provides world-class care for patients, made possible by the close link between our clinicians and researchers. This link enables the translation of innovative research into clinical practice and improved outcomes for patients. Our research is focused on understanding the genetic factors associated with congenital heart disease, developing better practices for the management and treatment of congenital heart disease, and improving long-term health outcomes for our patients.  

Our research is focused on the following programmes: 

Genetics Research  

Congenital Heart Disease (CHD) cases are often caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors. Understanding the genetic causes of CHD will help us to improve the current management and treatment of children with CHD, while also providing more individualised information to families regarding potential causes. Trying to answer the so often asked questions 'why did this happen' and 'will this happen again' is the driving force behind our research.  

For more information about our Kids Heart BioBank and genetics research, please click here.

Psychological Research 

Our Psychological Research Programme is dedicated to helping children with heart disease and their families to live their happiest and most fulfilling lives.

Established in 2008 by Associate Professor Nadine Kasparian, we strive for excellence and innovation in the care of infants and children with heart disease and their families, and to support the medical, nursing and allied health teams providing care. Our team works in partnership with researchers from psychology, paediatric cardiology, cardiothoracic surgery, clinical genetics, nursing, social work, the behavioural sciences, public health, developmental psychobiology, psychiatry, and child life therapy. These partnerships result in innovative studies that push the boundaries of research and clinical practice.

For more information about our current psychological research studies, please click here.

Clinical Research

We undertake a broad range of clinical research to better understand cardiac abnormalities in children to improve the treatment and management of their conditions. Major areas of investigation in this area include:

• The first review of all patients who underwent cardiac surgery under the age of one year. Our findings will identify key care need characteristics, and help us understand how prenatal diagnosis of heart disease in infants may influence their care.
• Examining the destiny of patients who begin care with a variety of forms of complex single ventricle abnormality.
• Exploring the outcomes for all fetuses seen by our Fetal Cardiology Team. Working with our partners in neonatal and postoperative intensive care, these complementary lines of investigation will help us develop long term follow-up for neurodevelopmental outcomes in children after heart surgery.

For more information about our clinical research, please click here.