Improving Outcomes of Newborns with Congenital Heart Disease: A Neurology Perspective

Steven P. Miller, MDCM MAS FRCPC

Dr. Steven Miller is Head of the Division of Neurology and the Centre for Brain & Mental Health at the Hospital for Sick Children, Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Toronto, and Senior Scientist in the Neuroscience & Mental Health Program at the Research Institute of SickKids. He holds the Bloorview Children’s Hospital Foundation Chair in Pediatric Neuroscience. 

Dr. Miller and his team focus on improving the clinical care of newborns requiring intensive care such as those born preterm or with congenital heart disease. Findings from his research program inform new strategies to promote optimal brain development and neurodevelopmental outcome. Most recently, he co-directs Child-Bright (https://child-bright.ca/), an innovative pan-Canadian network that aims to improve outcomes for children with brain-based developmental disabilities and their families through Canada’s Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research (SPOR). 

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Thiviya Selvanathan, MD FRCPC

Dr. Thiviya Selvanathan graduated from the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University and completed her Pediatric Neurology residency training at the Hospital for Sick Children and University of Toronto. She is currently a Neonatal Neurology Fellow at Sickkids and is completing a PhD in neonatal neuroscience at the Institute of Medical Sciences under the supervision of Dr. Steven Miller. Her research uses advanced neuroimaging methods to study the links between brain injury and clinical factors with brain maturation in infants at high risk for neurodevelopmental impairments.

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Bruce D. Gelb, MD

Bruce D. Gelb, M.D.is the Director and Gogel Family Professor of the Mindich Child Health and Development Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He is Professor of Pediatrics and of Genetics and Genomic Sciences. Dr. Gelb completed a pediatric residency and pediatric cardiology fellowship at Babies Hospital of Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center and Texas Children’s Hospital at the Baylor College of Medicine, respectively. He joined the faculty at Mount Sinai in 1991 after fellowship and has remained there since. He developed and now oversees an extensive program in genomics/gene discovery for congenital heart disease as well as in pediatric precision medicine. Dr. Gelb is the Director of the Mindich Child Health and Development Institute, which he helped found in 2009. He is former President of the American Pediatric Society, immediate past President of the Pediatric Academic Societies, Inc., and current Treasurer of the American Society of Human Genetics. He is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the National Academy of Medicine. At Mount Sinai, Dr. Gelb co-directs the Cardiovascular Genetics Program.

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Vanna Kazazian, MN, NP-Pediatrics

Vanna Kazazian is a Paediatric Nurse Practitioner in the Cardiac Neurodevelopment and Neonatal Neurology Programs at the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto. She is an Adjunct Lecturer at the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, University of Toronto. Vanna’s clinical and research interests focus on improving the neurodevelopmental outcomes of infants and children born with congenital heart disease (CHD). In particular, she is interested in using bedside neuromonitoring tools for improved recognition of brain injury in infants with CHD and has led the implementation of amplitude-integrated EEG (aEEG) monitoring in the SickKids Cardiac Critical Care Unit. She has partnered with the SickKids Laussen Labs team to work on integrating EEG with other physiologic parameters to develop models for seizure prediction and to better understand brain injury in neonates with CHD. She also led the routine genetic testing initiative for neonates with CHD at SickKids, to better predict long-term neurodevelopmental outcomes in these infants.

Vanna chairs the SickKids Cardiac Neurodevelopment and Neurocritical Care Interest Group, leads inpatient cardiac neurodevelopmental care, and co-leads an annual Neonatal Neurocritical Care Symposium for local and international nurses, physicians, and allied health team members.

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