Iki Adachi

Dr. Adachi is an associate professor of surgery, Baylor College of Medicine, and Director of Mechanical Circulatory Support and Heart Transplant at Texas Children’s Hospital. Dr. Adachi received his medical doctorate from Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine and completed cardiovascular training at National Cardiovascular Center, Japan. As a recipient of the Fontan prize from European Association of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery, Dr. Adachi spent two years conducting clinical studies at the Royal Brompton Hospital and Imperial College London in England. Dr. Adachi’s career has been deeply inspired by his interaction with Professor Francis Fontan, the inventor of the ‘Fontan operation’ that has saved numerous lives of children with complex single-ventricle congenital heart disease. It is increasingly becoming evident that, even after a perfect Fontan operation, these patients are faced with an inevitable fate of late attrition. Dr. Adachi has set his career goal to develop a method to improve the outlook for patients with single-ventricle heart disease using Ventricular Assist Device (VAD) technology.

To fulfill this goal, Dr. Adachi joined Texas Children’s Hospital in 2010 and has been serving as the Director of VAD program since 2012. Texas Children’s Hospital VAD program is considered as the largest of its kind and is an integral part of the busiest pediatric thoracic (heart and lung) organ transplant program. Development of a newer generation of VADs and their clinical application drive Dr. Adachi’s academic interest. The devices Dr. Adachi has worked on previously or currently in the laboratory under NIH grant support include Jarvik 2015 VAD and BiVACOR implantable total artificial heart.