Premium

Le Bonheur leader wants Heart Institute to be ‘center of excellence’

By , Daily Memphian Published: March 16, 2025 4:00 AM CT

Dr. Bret Mettler, chief of pediatric cardiac surgery and executive codirector of Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital’s Heart Institute, was called into the operating room recently to perform a life-saving surgery on a newborn baby. 

“That child had been in our world for less than 12 hours, and we were in the operating room repairing their heart,” said Mettler, who specializes in the surgical repair of complex congenital heart disease, heart transplantation and mechanical circulatory support. 

Such delicate procedures are not unusual at the Heart Institute where children less than a month old, or neonates, along with infants make up 30% of patients.

This is an excerpt of this story. To read more, please click here and subscribe.

Topics

Le Bonheur Children's Hospital Dr. Bret Mettler pediatric medicine UTHSC College of Medicine Subscriber Only

Thank you for supporting local journalism.

Subscribers to The Daily Memphian help fund our not-for-profit newsroom of nearly 40 local journalists plus more than 20 freelancers, all of whom work around the clock to cover the issues impacting our community. Subscriptions - and donations - also help fund our community access programs which provide free access to K-12 schools, community organizations, and more. Thank you for making our work possible.

Aisling Mäki

Aisling Mäki

Aisling Mäki covers health care, banking and finance, technology and professions. After launching her career in news two decades ago, she worked in public relations for almost a decade before returning to journalism in 2022.

As a health care reporter, she’s collaborated with The Carter Center, earned awards from the Associated Press and Society of Professional Journalists and won a 2024 Tennessee Press Association first-place prize for her series on discrepancies in Shelby County life expectancy by ZIP code.


Comments

Want to comment on our stories or respond to others? Join the conversation by subscribing now. Only paid subscribers can add their thoughts or upvote/downvote comments. Our commenting policy can be viewed here