Madonna Lee, MD, is a pediatric cardiac surgeon and specializes in congenital heart disease.
Dr. Lee says she was always interested in health and science growing up and originally explored a career in biomedical engineering. She quickly realized patients were always the most interesting part of her studies, decided to pursue a medical degree, and soon knew surgery was for her.
“There’s this immediate outcome, which I find very gratifying,” she says. “And the advances have been amazing. Just in the 10 years during my training, there have been so many changes. I love getting to use this technology, which brings me back to my biomedical engineering interest.”
Pediatric cardiac surgery was another shoe-in once she saw her first operation. “There are so many devices and a level of complexity of cases, combined with the technical aspect of what we do in the operating room,” says Dr. Lee, who was first trained in adult cardiac surgery before pursuing additional training in pediatrics. “Compared to adults, there is a lot more variety, from the size of the patient to whether they were born with a heart defect. Plus, there are many different strategies to help them as they grow into adulthood, which might require multiple operations.”
Dr. Lee says she also enjoys the collaborative nature of her job. “It’s a lot of team work and discussions with other specialists, including pediatric cardiologists, intensivists, and anesthesiologists,” she says. “Within the Yale New Haven Pediatric Heart Center, we have the benefit of multiple providers who are all experts in their own highly specialized areas. We give parents all of the information they need and emphasize that this is routine for us because we do it every day, even if surgery is understandably scary for them.”
Another benefit of the Pediatric Heart Center, Dr. Lee says, is that she and her colleagues are able to dedicate ample time to each patient. “We customize the care for each patient and their family; we focus on the family and how they are doing through the entire process,” she says.
Dr. Lee’s research interests include quality improvement and surgical outcomes. “For my specialty, there is so much complexity and variability, so to examine national databases of patients we have been following for a long time will help us improve care for congenital heart conditions,” she says.
