Facilities & Resources

• Outstanding faculty and staff who make up an inclusive team committed to resident education
• Multiple faculty members have won awards for excellence in resident teaching
• Exceptionally diverse patient population
• A 24-acre campus encompassing 4.4 million square feet including 1 million square feet of research space
• Over 32,000 operations performed in 42 operating rooms annually, representing the entire spectrum of surgery
• Nationally pre-eminent programs in cardiovascular and thoracic surgery, robotic and transcatheter procedures, transplant and mechanical circulatory support, congenital and general surgery
• Nationally ranked among the Top 10 medical centers and Top 10 NIH-funded non-university biomedical research institutions
• Brand new surgical simulation suites

The Department of Cardiac Surgery at Cedars-Sinai offers an away rotation for congenital cardiac surgery at Children's Hospital of Los Angeles (CHLA) to ensure that residents from our ACGME Integrated Thoracic Surgery Program obtain excellent congenital surgery educational experience and operative volume. 

CHLA is one of the largest programs in the U.S., led by Vaughn Starnes (chairman) and Cynthia Herrington (program director). The hospital campus is located within easy geographic reach for our residents, and has provided an outstanding educational experience, with uniformly excellent evaluations for faculty, didactic and operative content from our residents. 

The faculty at CHLA are highly experienced educators. They currently host residents from the ACGME 6-Year Integrated Thoracic Surgery Program at the University of Southern California (USC), and congenital fellows. To maximize the educational experience, the block schedule has been organized so that the I-6 residents from each program do not overlap. There is more than sufficient case volume, and the difference in educational goals with the congenital fellows is sufficiently large that there is no difficulty ensuring all trainees obtain an exceptional grounding in congenital cardiac surgery. 

State-of-the-art surgical simulation suites that include two fully equipped operating rooms, multiple ICU and trauma bays, and robotic surgery simulators offer an immersive environment equipped with the latest in adult and pediatric high-fidelity mannequins and medical devices. The center replicates the reality of surgical teamwork using the latest technology. Multiprofessional clinical skills development, teamwork, improving communication and, ultimately, patient safety are at the heart of the center's ethos. This approach is an incredible educational platform for surgical residents.

The Smidt Heart Institute is located in the state-of-the-art Pavilion, housing the academic, clinical offices and research laboratories of the Departments of Cardiac Surgery and Cardiology, in proximity to cardiac surgery operating rooms and intensive care units. The mission of the Smidt Heart Institute is to become a discovery engine for cardiovascular disease and therapeutics, leveraging the clinical expertise, diverse patient population and advanced cardiovascular research in translational, clinical and data science. Relevant Smidt Heart Institute resources include clinical and research leadership in advanced heart failure therapy with the largest heart transplant program in the U.S., averaging more than 120 heart transplants annually, experienced investigators and continuously NIH-funded laboratories focused on proteomics, molecular biology and cellular mechanisms of disease.