About the Author

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Constantine Mavroudis is Professor of Surgery at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Site Director of Johns Hopkins Children's Heart Surgery, Florida Hospital for Children in Orlando, Florida. He has published over 475 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and is Editor of Pediatric Cardiac Surgery, now in its 4th edition and of Atlas of Congenital Heart Surgery. In addition he has served as editor or coeditor for 6 other textbooks. He has served as Deputy Editor for Congenital Heart Surgery, Annals of Thoracic Surgery. He is a member and serves in leadership positions in the major Thoracic Surgery professional organizations. He is Past President of the Southern Thoracic Surgical Association and the Congenital Heart Surgeon's Society. His practice attracts patients from the United States and abroad because of the expertise he has developed in complex congenital heart repairs, arrhythmia surgery, coronary artery surgery in children, and adult congenital heart interventions. Carl L. Backer, MD, is the AC Buehler Professor of Surgery at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine and Division Head of Cardiovascular-Thoracic Surgery at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago. He is also director of the Heart Transplant Program, having performed over 238 transplants, the first of which was the first heart transplant at Children's Memorial Hospital on May 13, 1988 with the late Dr. Farouk S. Idriss. Dr. Backer has authored or coauthored over 200 refereed articles, 95 book chapters, and 4 textbooks and is coeditor on two cardiac surgery textbooks: Pediatric Cardiac Surgery (2nd, 3rd, and 4th editions) and Wilcox's Surgical Anatomy (4th edition). Dr. Backer is immediate Past Chairman of the Medical Advisory Board of the Children's Heart Foundation, an organization that distributes over one-half million dollars per year in research grants.>