By Vanessa Orr

For children with congenital heart disease and their families, surgery can be a daunting experience. This is why Redmond Burke, M.D., director of cardiovascular surgery at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital, has made it his life’s mission not only to try to reduce the trauma of care for each patient over their lifetimes, but to leverage the power of information technology to improve medical outcomes.

“I always felt like a heart program should have a philosophy of care: Why are we here?” he explained. “My philosophy is to  reduce the trauma of care for all of the children we touch with heart defects.

“Opening a chest and cutting a heart can be traumatic for both patients and their families,” he continued. “I wanted to focus on ways of accomplishing surgical goals with less trauma, fewer big incisions, less bleeding, and less injury to babies’ bodies.”

Dr. Burke first became interested in becoming a heart surgeon in high school, when he saw a picture in a magazine of the first heart transplant. “It captured my imagination,” he said, “so I went into my schooling oriented toward becoming a heart doctor, and I worked as hard as I could to get there.

“The hardest heart surgery you can do is on the smallest hearts, and that’s the area I fell in love with,” he added. “Luckily, I had the dexterity required, and was able to train with the best surgeons in the world at Children’s Hospital Boston. Then I went on to build my own heart program in Miami in 1995, and I have never regretted one moment of my career choice.”

As an attending cardiac surgeon at Children’s Hospital Boston, Dr. Burke pioneered minimally invasive interventions using endoscopic surgical techniques for congenital heart surgery, designing instruments and techniques in the laboratory. He subsequently performed a series of surgical firsts, including the world’s first endoscopic vascular ring division, diaphragm plication, and thoracic duct ligation.

After graduating from Stanford University, he received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School and served as chief resident in cardiovascular surgery at Children’s Hospital Boston before becoming the director of cardiovascular surgery at Miami Children’s Hospital (now Nicklaus Children’s Hospital) at the age of 36.

An inventor and software developer, Dr. Burke also worked with colleagues to create the first database for congenital heart disease nationwide.

“I was blessed to be raised in Cupertino, CA, a few years before Apple was built in a garage three blocks from my house; I was surrounded by Silicon Valley high-tech people and innovators,” he said. “Realizing that doctors can’t get better unless they can measure their performance, I worked with some very smart colleagues to create the first database for congenital heart disease.

“If you can’t measure your outcomes, you can’t get better,” he continued. “And it’s not just for doctors, either; moms and dads need this data to determine how good a surgeon is. We all want to think that we’re the best, but now there is a platform that measures outcomes and reports the results on the Internet.”

As technology has advanced, Dr. Burke has not only continued to pioneer revolutionary surgical procedures, but has also embraced innovations that improve patient outcomes.

“The better you can picture an operation in your head, the more likely you are to succeed, and virtual reality and 3D modeling are two unique tools that you can use to see operations before you perform them in the operating room,” he explained. “It’s far better to have 10 steps of an operation enumerated on a chalkboard or demonstrated on 3D constructive tools for your team to use for planning than to make it up as you go along. It is safer, faster and more effective.”

He added that he is especially excited with advances in genetic therapy. “The most thrilling thing that I’ve seen recently was the pig heart implanted in an adult with end-stage heart failure,” he said. “The heart was treated with genetic therapy to reduce the rate of rejection.

“We need small hearts for small babies, and most innovations that work in adults are too big,” he continued. “But if we are able to replace hearts with genetically modified hearts, it might buy our sickest babies extra months or even years.”

Even with all of the scientific advancements available, Dr. Burke knows that it is often the personal touch that makes the difference.

“The cardiac team at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital has a passion for technology, but they also really care about the patients,” he said. “It’s is an honor to be trusted with families’ babies who have heart defects, and we’ve got a great team here that covers every aspect of cardiac care for these children; they are the best at what they do.”