Dr. James St Louis MD

Dr. James St. Louis currently holds the J. Harold Harrison Endowed Chair of Surgery at the Augusta University, University of Georgia Health System.  He serves as the Chief of Pediatric and Congenital Heart Surgery at the Children’s Hospital of Georgia and Co-director of the Pediatric and Congenital Heart Program. After completing medical school at Georgetown University School of Medicine, he accepted a cardiothoracic residency at Duke University under Dr. David Sabiston. With completion of his general and adult cardiothoracic surgery training, he did a one year fellowship in neonatal and pediatric cardiac surgery at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri. Before arriving at the Children’s Hospital of Georgia in 2020, Dr. St. Louis was the Surgical Director of pediatric heart transplantation and the circulatory mechanical assist program at Children’s Mercy Hospital.

 He has been a practicing congenital heart surgery for the last twenty year, performing 150 major congenital heart operations annually.  His clinical expertise has focused on optimizing surgical outcomes with neonatal heart defects. He has spent the last fourteen years leading pediatric heart transplant and mechanical assist device programs. He has had an interest in the mechanical support of the failing Fontan circuit.   He has been recognized with numerous awards for his clinical practice including, Top Docs, Best Doctors, and Top Surgeon: Congenial Heart Surgeon in both Minneapolis and Kansas City.  Dr. St. Louis has also been active with Health Link, a philanthropic group in Minneapolis Missouri, for the last 13 years performing over 15 mission trip to China, conducting numerous congenital heart surgeries and mentoring multiple young Chinese congenital heart surgeons. He also served as the Program Director of the ACGME –certified congenital heart surgery fellowship at Children’s Mercy, Kansas City, for the last 3 years.

Dr. St. Louis’s  most recent academic efforts have focused on international outcomes of congenital heart surgery, which has afforded him over 70 podium presentations across the globe over the last 5 years.   He serves on the Governing Council of the World Society for Pediatric and Congenital Heart Surgery and Co-chair of the World Database for Pediatric and Congenital Heart Surgery. In close collaboration with Dr. James Kirklin from UAB and the Kirklin Institute of research Surgical Outcomes (KIRSO), he developed an international database to assess the outcomes of congenial heart surgery across the globe. Dr. St. Louis is a member of the STS, AATS, CHSS, ECHSA, servicing on multiple committees and taskforces within these societies. Importantly, he has been a member of the STS Workforce on Coding and Reimbursement for the last 5 years, contributing to coding issues associated with cardiac and thoracic surgery. He is an active member International Society of Nomenclature of Pediatric and Congenital Heart disease, contributing to the establishment of the International Pediatric cardiac code which has now been accepted by the WHO to service as the congenital defect codes for ICD-11. He also serves on the database and program committees for the Pediatric Cardiac Care Consortium (PC4) and associated surgery editor for Cardiology in the Young.