At Group Florence Nightingale Hospitals, Heart Center, a large team composed of both cardiologists and cardiovascular surgeons work to treat various heart diseases in children and adults.

Cardiac catheterization and angiography procedure in more than 5000 children!

Our Diagnostic and Treatment Center for Heart Diseases in Children offers you services with experienced and responsive team. In addition to the directors Surgeon Bülent Polat, the other members are Anesthesiologist Ayşegül Türetmiş, M.D., and Attending Pediatrician Günay Cantürk, M.D.

As the Pediatric Cardiology Team (heart disease specialists); our objective is

• to provide children with heart diseases with high standard diagnostic and treatment facilities;
• to train well-educated and experienced pediatric cardiologists, congenital cardiac surgeons, anesthesiologists experienced in heart diseases and pediatricians,
• to contribute into pediatric cardiology literature.

What is “heart disease” in children?

• Any heart problems in children up to 18 years old are taken care of at our center, including fetuses.
• The obstetricians perform fetal echocardiography for fetuses with a suspected congenital heart disease, follow up these fetuses and make interventions in the womb when necessary.
• The team makes sure that the fetuses that have been diagnosed with a congenital heart disease have optimum conditions at delivery and after the delivery.
• Any necessary bed-side diagnostic evaluations are performed in intensive care units and the required treatments are immediately started.
• Additionally, adults with a congenital heart disease are followed up and treated by our team.

What do we perform up today on our beloved ones?

• Angiographic operations are successfully performed at our angiography unit for pediatric patients including newborns. Such operations can be for diagnostic or treatment purposes.
• Currently 4514 pediatric patients have undergone a cardiac catheterization and angiography at our center.
• Of these patients, approximately 2804 are for therapeutic operations. Such operations include closing the holes in the heart which are called ASD (Atrial Septal Defect) and VSD (Ventricular Septal Defect), repairing stenosis using a balloon, enlarging stenosis of major veins using a balloon or a stent, and closing spaces between the veins causing cardiac tire.
• Any therapeutic operations currently performed across the world are successfully applied at our center.

How do we evaluate our patients?

The cases requiring an operation are evaluated by the Surgical Board in order to plan the most suitable operation and apply smoothly. During post-operative period, and during and after follow-up period of intensive care unit, the surgeons, anesthesiologists, and pediatric heart specialists work in coordination.

• Until now, 4311 children have undergone a cardiac surgery at our center.

At our center, 5,000 children have had heart surgery so far.

Our goal is to provide high standards of diagnosis and treatment for children with heart disease, well-trained and experienced child cardiologists, congenital heart surgeons, congenital heart surgeons to carry our patients and families to healthier tomorrow with our team of anesthesiologists and pediatricians experienced in diseases.

In our Cardiovascular Surgery Center we perform;

• Coronary artery by-pass surgery
• Cardiac valve surgery
• Aortic aneurysm surgery
• Surgery of arterial and vascular diseases for adult patients.

Our Cardiovascular Surgery Center, which develops a special patient care program for all its patients with a multidisciplinary approach, successfully treats high-risk heart patients. Our team, which works in close cooperation with the Department of Cardiology, also with our Diagnostic and Treatment Center for Heart Diseases in Children, as well as Heart Transplantation and Cardioassisted Devices.

Why Florence Nightingale Cardiovascular Surgery Center?

• The rates of infection and complications coincide with the top 10 hospitals in the United States, while the mortality rate is less than 1%.
• Group Florence Nightingale Hospitals, Cardiovascular Surgery Center provides training programs for foreign surgeons in minimally invasive heart surgery and arrhythmia surgery.
• Our Center has been successfully implementing minimally invasive cardiac surgery program since 1999.
• Our robotic surgery program and arrhythmia surgery program, which has been applied for the first time in Turkey, has been continuing successfully since 2004.
• Non-surgical cardiac valve exchange program (TAVI), which we have partnered with our Department of Cardiology since 2009, enables successful treatment for our patients with high operational risk.
• Numerous national and international publications carried out by our cardiovascular surgeons acknowledge the success of our center.
• Our Cardiovascular Surgery Center has been accepting children with heart diseases from abroad since 2011, and has performed many successful heart surgeries.