In a recent interview with FIU News, Dr. David Kalfa, newly arrived chief of cardiovascular surgery at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital and professor at Florida International University’s Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine, outlined his pioneering work in treating congenital heart defects and his vision for the future of pediatric cardiac care.
Kalfa emphasized the urgent need for improved heart valve solutions for children born with congenital defects, which affect approximately 1 percent of U.S. newborns and often require surgical intervention. Traditional non-living tissue valves—typically harvested from animals—fail prematurely, cannot grow with the child, and are often unavailable in sufficiently small sizes for infant patients.
To address these limitations, Kalfa is advancing living allogenic valve transplantation (LAVT), also referred to as partial heart transplantation. His research team has developed a patented bioreactor system capable of maintaining living donor valves for up to seven weeks—an exponential improvement over the prior 48-hour viability threshold. This extended storage period could enable off-the-shelf availability of suitable valves for pediatric patients, reducing wait times and the need for repeated open-heart surgeries as children grow.
Kalfa, who performed the world’s first “domino” infant partial heart transplant in 2023—where one donor heart not only saved the primary recipient but also provided usable valves for two additional infants—described the emotional and clinical impact of these procedures.
Looking ahead, he plans to expand robotic pediatric cardiac surgery at FIU and apply artificial intelligence tools to predict adverse events and improve risk assessments. Kalfa also intends to establish a congenital heart defect research institute through collaboration between FIU and Nicklaus Children’s, integrating basic science, translational research, and clinical trials.
His work, he asserts, has the potential to transform cardiac care for children regionally and globally.
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