Mission

Kardias was founded in 2000 with the concern to improve the quality of comprehensive care of children with congenital heart disease, led by Dr. Alexis Palacios Macedo, Pediatric Cardiovascular Surgeon. Dr. Palacios Macedo had trained as a Fellow of Dr. Charles Fraser in Texas Children's Hospital, and wanted to replicate the best practices he learned back to Mexico. He started as chief of surgeon in the Pediatric Cardiovascular Surgery Program of the National Institute of Pediatrics (INP). Here he became keenly aware of all the lags and needs that the hospital needed in order to improve the reach and outcomes. This is when Kardias was born, to help fundraise to fill the gap between what was available and what we needed to try and replicate best practices around the world. Understanding the concept of a dedicated team, the same group of specialized doctors working together all the time, was a mayor and disruptive innovation that Dr. Palacios Macedo started to replicate. Along the same line the need for a cardiovascular intensive care unit, against the concept of a pediatric intensive care unit, was also a mayor accomplishment. In 2003, in collaboration with the "Heart Center" of Texas Children's Hospital (TCH) began the Training and Development Program to health professionals of the division of Cardiovascular Surgery of the INP. Over the years, the cardiovascular division of the INP has been strengthened with infrastructure and training. In 2009, the Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit (UCICV) of this institute was inaugurated, significantly improving the care of patients with congenital heart disease who undergo surgery. However the program hit a wall in terms of improvement in outcomes in mortality rates, because of the limitations and bureocracy in INP. Because of this we designed an inovative program with the best Mexican private hospital, ABC. In Mexico it is very difficult, and not comun to have a high speciality division in a private hospital, because the volume of patients can be found only in public sector. It is estimated that only 5%-7% of population has private insurance. This is were Kardias contributes, to channel and pay for patients from a vulnerable population, in the private hospital. The benefits of this collaboration are twofold. Offering patients from without resources the best posible care they can receive. And allowing the ABC hospital have a Heart Center, so that in Mexico we can offer the best care available with world wide standards. The collaboration agreement with the ABC Medical Center, in 2012, it initiated a pediatric cardiovascular surgery program to care for vulnerable patients from the INP and the government hospitals of Mexico City. Today, Kardias has performed a total of 2789 surgeries, of which 396 were carried out in the ABC and 2393 in the INP.