Anne Marie Valente, MD, the outpatient director of the Boston Adult Congenital Heart Service (BACH), says there is no set age at which every person should transition from a pediatric cardiologist to an adult congenital specialist. “It’s a process that begins with teenagers increasingly taking ownership of their own care,” she says. “Lots of times, patients seek out an adult specialist because of a life event; for women, it’s often pregnancy. We want the transition to be a process and a partnership between the patient, family and cardiology teams.”
Valente says that pediatricians can assist with a heart patient’s transition to adult care by making the initial contact to the pediatric cardiologist proposing the idea. …Read More