CLEVELAND — At five months, little Cody Waldron underwent open heart surgery for a congenital heart defect. He won't remember being the first patient inside UH Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital's new pediatric cardiac intensive care unit (PCICU), but his parents definitely will.
"The new unit is so bright and inviting and so hopeful," Cody's mother Ashley said. "Being in there kind of brightens up your spirits."
After surgery, Cody was originally placed in the regular PICU while the new unit was getting prepped. That space has patients with all different types of needs, and nurses say it's difficult for parents because cardiac cases tend to need ICU longer than other patients.
"Seeing patients come and go frequently isn't easy on these parents," Dr. Ira Cheifetz, the PCICU's director and chief of cardiac critical care at Rainbow, explained.
The state-of-the-art PCICU at UH Rainbow has 12 beds and was designed with patients and families in mind. The unit features spacious rooms, plenty of windows to allow for natural light, and a line of sight design that allows nurses to know what's happening in each room.
The PCICU joins the 10-bed cardiac step-down unit along with hybrid cardiac catheterization and surgical suites within the Congenital Heart Collaborative at the hospital.
"I like to say it was just the atmosphere alone was much different, and it was definitely a lighter feeling," Cody's father Matt said. "Everything was bright, and the rooms were more comfortable."
The rooms are large, and have sleep and work spaces for parents. Each also has its own window.
"It's just so important to maintain their normal diurnal variation — days are days and nights are nights," Cheifetz told 3News. "There's a really well known condition called ICU delirium, where patients' brains get miswired because they don't have normal cues of morning and night. There's all the noise, the stimulation, and they literally become delirious and typically have worse outcomes."
There are multiple room monitors visible from every corner of the unit, and if they turn blue, nurses know where they're needed. However, the alarm system isn't jarring.
"We designed the unit to be able to be sound absorbing, so it's quiet," Cheifetz said. "There's not a lot of hearing alarms, a lot of announcements. It's really quiet to really avoid that unnecessary stimulation."
Nearly 1% of babies born in the United States each year will have a heart defect, with congenital heart defects (CHDs) are the most common type of birth defect. To meet this growing community need, UH Rainbow and Columbus-based Nationwide Children's Hospital came together eight years ago to form the Congenital Heart Collaborative, an innovative model of care for patients with CHDs from before birth through adulthood.
This unique collaboration provides families access to one of the most extensive and experienced heart teams, recognized by U.S. News & World Report as tied for 27th (Rainbow) and No. 5 (Nationwide) for cardiology and heart surgery. In addition, the Congenital Heart Collaborative is the only heart center in Ohio offering a dedicated fetal cardiac intervention program, a cardiac neurodevelopment program, and a fully accredited adult congenital heart program.