Bioethical Controversies in Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery

This title reviews the bioethical issues in congenital heart disease and other difficult pediatric cardiology and cardiac surgical situations. It provides considered opinions and recommendations as to the preferred actions to take in these cases, stressing the importance of making informed decisions that are bioethically sound and doing so using considered reasoning of all the related sensitive issues.

Bioethical Controversies in Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery provides detailed recommendations on potential solutions to make bioethical decisions in difficult clinical scenarios. There is particular emphasis on controversies involving surgery for hypoplastic left heart syndrome, futility, informed consent, autonomy, genomics, and beneficence. It is intended for use by a wide range of practitioners, including congenital heart surgeons, pediatric cardiologists, pediatric intensivists, nurse practitioners, physician’s assistants, and clinical ethicists. 

• Bioethics
• Informed Consent
• Genomics
• Autonomy
• Pediatric Cardiology
• Congenital Heart Surgery

• Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, St. Petersburg, USA

  Constantine Mavroudis

• Rollins College, Winter Park, USA

  J. Thomas Cook

• University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

  Constantine D. Mavroudis

 Constantine Mavroudis, MD is Professor of Surgery and Bioethics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He received his training at the University of California-San Francisco training program. He is Past President of the Southern Thoracic Surgical Association and the Congenital Heart Surgeons Society. He has also served in leadership positions in national and international organizations.

J.Thomas Cook, PhD is Professor of Philosophy at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. He earned is BA from Johns Hopkins University, MA from Vanderbilt University, and PhD from Vanderbilt University. His research interests include 17th century philosophy with an interest in Spinoza and Philosophy of the mind and moral psychology. He teaches courses on Philosophy of the Mind, History of Modern Philosophy, Logic, and Philosophy in Literature. He has particular interests in medical bioethics.

Constantine D. Mavroudis, MD, MSc, MTS is an 8th year resident in the cardiothoracic training program at the University of Pennsylvania. His background in bioethics stems from his undergraduate degree in philosophy at Williams College. He completed his medical education at Loyola University Chicago, Stritch School of Medicine, where he concurrently received both an MD and an MSc in clinical research methods and epidemiology. His research interests include surgical ethics, surgical simulation and education, neuromonitoring techniques during cardiac surgery, and mitochondrial diagnostics and therapeutics. He is the author of numerous articles in bioethics and recently completed a two-year post-doctoral research fellowship at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where he investigated novel neuromonitoring techniques and the mitochondrial effects of deep hypothermic circulatory arrest in neonatal swine with, and received an MTS in translational research at the University of Pennsylvania. 

Policies and ethics