Department of Pediatrics
The Department of Pediatrics at Cedars-Sinai offers comprehensive inpatient and outpatient care for children, from neonates through adolescents. Areas of specialty include cardiology and cardiac surgery, endocrinology, hematology and oncology, infectious diseases and HIV, inflammatory bowel disease, neonatology, nephrology, neurology and neuromuscular diseases, pulmonology and cystic fibrosis, general surgery, liver and kidney transplantation and urology.
Cedars-Sinai has a Level III regional neonatal intensive care unit, one of the largest in Southern California, which admits nearly 700 infants per year. The pediatric intensive care unit admits nearly 400 children per year, including patients recovering from major surgery or requiring intervention for asthma, respiratory failure, shock, cancer and trauma.
To mitigate the stress experienced by young children in the hospital, the Department of Pediatrics provides age-appropriate family centered care with Child Life therapeutic play opportunities in a playroom or at the bedside. Family members are permitted to visit at any time of the day or night.
The department also provides outpatient care through clinics dedicated to craniofacial problems, cystic fibrosis, headaches, medical genetics and dysmorphology, and metabolic disorders. Cedars-Sinai's nationally known Pediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) Center provides diagnosis and treatment for patients with Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis who have exhausted standard therapies.
Research
Investigators at Cedars-Sinai's Steven Spielberg Pediatric Research Center conduct extensive research in the fields of kidney disease, organ transplantation, mental retardation, skeletal diseases, deafness, connective tissue diseases, infectious diseases and HIV, epilepsy and diabetes. Additional research related to pediatric care takes place at the Medical Genetics Institute, which investigates genetic diseases and birth defects, the Immunobiology Institute, which seeks understanding of infections, inflammations and fibrosis and the IBD Center, which seeks new cures for inflammatory bowel disease.
Education
The Department of Pediatrics offers a pediatric residency program and a three-year fellowship in neonatal-perinatal medicine.
The Department of Pediatrics is a major training site for the UCLA tri-campus Pediatric residency program and is a training site for UCLA fellowship programs in Neonatal-Perinatal medicine, Pediatric Infectious Diseases, and pediatric nephrology.
Leadership
Charles Simmons, Jr., MD
Chair, Pediatrics
Director, Neonatology
