Children’s care
The patient cannot tell you what they want.
Everything about arranging paediatric and congenital heart surgery follows from that. A parent decides, a parent travels, and a parent carries the weight of a choice made on somebody else’s behalf.
Congenital heart surgery in India is the paediatric field where travelling is most often justified, because the case volumes are very high. The reason is uncomfortable rather than flattering.
more than 200,000
children are born with congenital heart disease in India each year, and between a fifth and a third of them need an intervention to survive infancy
Indian Pediatrics and Indian Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery Checked 2026-08-29.
That volume builds real expertise. It sits alongside a specialist pool that is small for the population it serves, which is why the question is never which country but which named surgeon, how many of your child’s specific defect they repaired last year, and who covers the follow-up for the next fifteen years.
Medically reviewed
Reviewed by Dr Gunjan Patel, MBBS, registered with the Gujarat Medical Council (G-65059). Last reviewed 29 August 2026. Reviewed for accuracy only. This page is general information, not advice about your own case, and Dr Gunjan Patel does not diagnose, prescribe or treat.
What is different here
Three constraints that do not apply to an adult.
None of these are reasons not to go. They are the things that have to be settled before a date means anything.
Consent belongs to a parent, throughout
A child cannot consent to surgery, so a parent or legal guardian decides and has to be present for every stage of it. That is not a formality. It means at least one parent stays for the whole admission, and it means documentation proving the relationship, which becomes a visa question rather than a hospital one.
A child travelling for treatment needs their own medical visa, and accompanying parents need attendant visas that expire with the child’s. The rules are on the visa page, and they should be checked against your own nationality before anything is booked.
The timing is the child’s, not the family’s
Congenital heart operations are often scheduled around weight and around the way a particular defect behaves as a child grows. Some are best done in the first weeks, some are deliberately delayed until a child is bigger, and some are staged across several years.
So the date is a clinical output, and a centre that offers to fit your child in next month because it suits your leave from work has answered the wrong question. The right question is when their team believes it should happen and why. The operation decides the price too, and what Indian hospitals charge for each is set out in child heart surgery cost in India.
A repair is not the end of it
Children grow, and a repair sized for a two year old can need revisiting at twelve. Valves are replaced, conduits are changed, and a proportion of children need further surgery in adolescence or adulthood. This is normal rather than a sign that something went wrong.
It also means a paediatric cardiology service at home has to own this child for years, not weeks. Our ninety days of coordination cover the return and the handover. They cover nothing like the span this needs, and pretending otherwise would be the easiest sentence on this page to write.
Where the expertise sits
High volume and a small specialist pool, at the same time.
Both are true, and holding them together is what makes the decision a real one.
about 120
paediatric cardiac surgeons and around 600 paediatric cardiologists serve a population of over 1.3 billion, which is why the named surgeon matters more here than the hospital
Pediatric Cardiac Care in India, Future Cardiology Checked 2026-08-29.
A published estimate rather than a register count. We cite it to show the specialist pool is small relative to the population, not to rank any individual or centre.
A market with enormous demand and few specialists concentrates cases into a small number of hands. For a parent that cuts two ways. The surgeons who do this work do a great deal of it, which is the single strongest predictor of outcome in congenital heart surgery. And a hospital’s reputation tells you almost nothing about whether the person operating on your child is one of them.
So the questions we put in writing are about a named individual: how many repairs of your child’s specific defect they performed last year, who operates if they are unavailable, and what the paediatric intensive care arrangement is afterwards, since that is where congenital cases are won or lost.
What we ask, on your behalf
- The named surgeon’s annual volume for this specific defect, not the department’s
- Who operates if that surgeon is unavailable on the day
- Whether the intensive care unit is paediatric rather than mixed
- Whether a paediatric anaesthetist and intensivist are on the team
- What happens if the repair needs staging rather than finishing in one operation
- What the plan is for the next review, and the one after that
The rest of paediatrics
Where else an opinion is worth having.
A second opinion on a paediatric diagnosis
This is the most useful thing we do for families and it requires no travel at all. A rare diagnosis in a child, or a recommendation for major surgery, is worth a second read by someone with nothing to gain from the answer. What that involves.
Paediatric neurosurgery and cancer care
Both are areas where a plan should be reviewed before it starts rather than questioned halfway through. For childhood cancer in particular the treatment is usually long, and starting it near home and finishing it near home matters more than where the first opinion came from.
Paediatric kidney disease and transplant
Transplant involving a foreign national requires authorisation committee approval under the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act, and for a child the documentation is more involved rather than less. The transplant page covers the rules.
Paediatric orthopaedics
Deformity correction and limb reconstruction in a growing child are planned around growth rather than around the current problem, which is a different discipline from the adult version of the same operation.
Where we would say no
Reasons we would tell a family to stay.
We are paid the same either way, so this list costs us nothing except the cases that should not have travelled.
Stay where you are if
- The child is unstable, or the team at home has said this is time critical. Arranging travel takes weeks that a sick child may not have
- Treatment has already started and moving would interrupt a working protocol, which is common in childhood cancer
- No paediatric service at home has agreed to take over the follow-up, which for a child means years
- Only one parent can travel and the admission is long. That is a reason to wait, not a detail to manage
- The same operation is available at home within a clinically acceptable time
The hardest version of this conversation is with a parent who has decided that doing something is better than doing nothing. Sometimes it is. Sometimes the honest answer is that the plan at home is already the right one and a second opinion will confirm it, which is worth knowing and costs a fraction of a journey.
We would rather say that in a free conversation than take a fee to arrange something a family did not need.
Seven situations where staying where you are is the better decision
Questions
What parents ask us.
Do both parents need to travel?
At least one must, and must stay for the whole admission, because consent for a child sits with a parent or guardian at every stage. Whether both should depends on the length of the stay and on who else is at home. Two attendant visas per patient are commonly available, and it is worth confirming against your own nationality before booking.
How soon can the operation happen?
That is a clinical question rather than a scheduling one. Congenital heart surgery is often timed around a child’s weight and the behaviour of the specific defect, so the right answer may be sooner than you expect or deliberately later. A centre offering a date before assessing your child is telling you about its diary rather than about your child.
Will my child need more surgery later?
A proportion of children do, and it is not a sign that anything went wrong. Repairs sized for a small child are outgrown, and valves and conduits get replaced as a child grows. Ask about the expected sequence before you travel, because it changes who needs to be looking after your child for the next decade.
What about school?
A congenital cardiac admission is measured in weeks rather than days once recovery and clearance to fly are counted, and complex cases run longer. It is worth telling the school early and asking what they can provide remotely. Families who plan this before travelling find the return much easier.
Can you help if we are not travelling at all?
Yes, and this is the most common thing we do for families. An independent second opinion on a paediatric diagnosis needs no journey. If the answer is that the plan at home is right, that is a good outcome and you will have spent a fraction of what a trip would cost.
Start with a second opinion, not a flight.
Thirty minutes, free. For most families the useful first step needs no travel at all.