Athena Becker has undergone six cardiac catheterizations at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, one for each year she’s been alive.
A seventh is likely on the horizon for the recent kindergarten graduate as doctors continue to monitor and repair a birth defect that makes it harder for her heart to pump blood to her lungs.
She’s one of many patients who will benefit from the hospital’s $85 million heart institute expansion, which will welcome its first patients Wednesday.
The 50,000-square-foot, three-story facility offers state-of-the-art catheterization labs as well as pre- and post-operative care areas dedicated to cardiac patients. The current setup has all surgical patients intermingled, adding stress to already challenging days for Athena and her family.
“Somebody could be having tubes put in their ears, somebody could be getting their tonsils out,” said Athena’s mother, Melissa Becker of Brownsville, Fayette County. “It can be overwhelming with so many people around her.”
It’s the first major update to the Lawrenceville hospital since it opened in 2009, but just one of several pricey projects undertaken by Western Pennsylvania’s dominant health system in recent years. Like many UPMC endeavors, the heart institute building was partly funded by donations.
UPMC Children’s Hospital treats some of the sickest kids with the most complex heart problems, not just in the region, but across the U.S. and worldwide. About a quarter of the 20,000 or so patients seen by the hospital’s cardiologists each year live outside Pennsylvania.
“We are sort of the last place they call because their kid is so sick and nobody else is opening doors,” said Dr. Victor Morell, chief of pediatric cardiothoracic surgery at UPMC.
‘Destination center’
UPMC expects a dedicated heart institute building will further boost that expansive draw.
“The idea is the heart institute is going to be a destination center for children and adults who have congenital heart defects,” said Diane Hupp, president of UPMC Children’s Hospital.
One way UPMC hopes to accomplish this is by ramping up its cardiac catheterization program. The hospital currently has two labs where doctors thread thin, flexible tubes through blood vessels and into the heart to diagnose cardiovascular issues and repair minor defects.
About 800 patients undergo these relatively simple procedures at the hospital each year. Three new labs in the heart institute building — the existing two in the main hospital are being converted for other use — will bring capacity up to about 1,200 annual procedures.
One of the three has direct access to an MRI machine, a rarity for U.S. hospitals, allowing doctors to get detailed images of the heart right before catheterization, instead of sending patients to a different floor and possibly having to sedate them multiple times.
“It’s all more cumbersome and less desirable than it could or should be,” said Dr. Bryan Goldstein, the hospital’s director of cardiac catheterization and intervention. “So we built a great cath lab and a great MRI space, but we built them adjacent.”
The cardiac intensive care unit and operating rooms aren’t moving from their home on the hospital’s fourth floor, which is connected to the new addition by a small skywalk.
A second phase of construction is underway, with an estimated end date some time in mid-2027.
As part of phase two, the heart institute building will get an outpatient clinic, rehabilitation gym and expanded echocardiogram lab, where patients can receive ultrasounds of their heart.