Advancing Pediatric Heart Care Through Collaboration and Precision

By: Jack Rychik, MD 

Cardiology 2026, the 29th Annual Update on Pediatric and Congenital Cardiovascular Disease, took place from February 25 to March 1, 2026, in Scottsdale, Arizona. The five-day meeting, hosted by Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), drew about 800 attendees, featured 170 faculty members, and highlighted 200 abstracts. Sessions were well attended and lively, including TED-style plenary talks designed to promote engagement and an exchange of ideas.

Togetherness is Essential

This year’s multidisciplinary conference emphasized the theme of togetherness - that pediatric and congenital heart care works best when centers and disciplines share knowledge and collaborate. Because each condition and patient are unique, sharing our experiences helps create stronger, evidence-based care that benefits more children and families. Many sessions focused on care models that integrate allied team members to manage common clinical challenges. 

Multidisciplinary Care Matters

Caring for children with heart disease involves many specialties beyond cardiology: surgeons, neonatologists, maternal-fetal medicine, geneticists, nurses, intensivists, mental health providers, nutrition and exercise specialists and social workers. Attention to mental health, nutrition, exercise, and social determinants of health is vital to improving outcomes.

Advocacy and Policy Make a Difference

Sessions highlighted the need to improve awareness, education, and societal support for people born with heart differences. Strengthening collaborative learning networks can expand access and quality of care, including global efforts to improve pediatric heart care.

Early Intervention Matters

New research explored at the conference underlined how prenatal factors, including placental health and preterm birth, can influence heart development and long-term cardiovascular outcomes. We are learning how identifying modifiable prenatal risks early can allow interventions during pregnancy that improve lifelong heart health.

Genetics and Precision Medicine are Transforming Care

Genetics and cardio-genetics are no longer optional tools but are fundamentally reshaping diagnosis, risk assessment, and treatment in pediatric heart care. We now recognize that conditions that appear similar, such as cardiomyopathies, can arise from different genetic causes, and those distinctions strongly influence disease behavior and treatment response. 

Targeted genetic testing allows clinicians to identify the underlying cause, predict the risk of life-threatening events, and tailor therapies to the specific genetic abnormality. As precision medicine advances, care is shifting from reactive to proactive treatment, individualized strategies that better prevent complications, optimize therapy, and improve both survival and quality of life for children with heart disease.

Putting Patients and Families at the Heart of Decisions

Decisions about heart care are often complicated and deeply personal. During the conference, we discussed that patients and families should be central to the process. It is critical for doctors, patients, families, and other allied professionals to talk through the risks, benefits, and what matters most to the child’s life. For example, a teenager with a genetic risk may accept some danger to continue playing a beloved sport, or a family may weigh tradeoffs when taking on possible risks of pregnancy in those with single ventricle/Fontan circulation. By sharing information clearly, listening to families’ goals, and making decisions together, care becomes safer, more realistic, and better aligned with each individual's quality of life.

Leveraging Technology to Promoting Cardiac Recovery

We discussed advances in catheter-based therapies, tissue-engineered grafts that can grow with children (important for Fontan patients), remote monitoring, and mechanical support (ventricular assist devices). These innovations offer options and new strategies for supporting failing hearts and promoting recovery.

Overall, Cardiology 2026 highlighted urgency and optimism: improving outcomes for children with congenital and pediatric heart disease depends on collaboration across centers and disciplines, integrating genetics and prenatal insights, involving families in decisions, advancing technology, and advocating for patients in the broader community. Attendees left with innovative ideas to bring back to their practices and with renewed commitment to the joy of working together to save and improve children’s lives.

Jack Rychik, MD, is Director of the Fetal Heart Program and the Fontan Rehabilitation Wellness, Activity and Resilience Development (FORWARD) Program at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He holds the Robert and Delores Harrington Endowed Chair in Pediatric Cardiology. 

Save the date for Cardiology 2027: The 30th Annual Update on Pediatric and Congenital Cardiovascular Disease in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, February 3-7, 2027.