One of many benefits of living in Houston is the extraordinary Texas Children’s Hospital located in Houston’s famed Texas Medical Center. Texas Children’s — as Houstonians call it — is truly one of the most remarkable medical facilities for children in the world.
This Chronicle article reports on a reception that Texas Childrens held on Friday to celebrate the 50th year of service by the hospital’s pediatric heart unit, which reflects Texas Childrens’ overall excellence:

Texas Children’s Hospital . . . opened in February 1954. Pediatric cardiology was the hospital’s first subspecialty. Today, as many as 12,000 patients are treated and 700 surgeries performed annually at the heart center.
More than 35,000 children a year are born with congenital heart defects, a primary cause of first-year death of infants. Since the 1960s, . . . survival rates in such cases have increased to nearly 95 percent from 70 percent.
Dr. Ralph Feigin, the hospital’s physician-in-chief, said the hospital’s heart center has been a “cradle of innovations since its inception.”

“The center has pioneered numerous pediatric cardiology procedures and maintains one of the nation’s highest success rates in treating patients with congenital heart abnormalities,” he said.

Increasingly, the hospital has moved into high-tech medicine. About 550 fetal echocardiograms are performed each year to identify heart problems before birth. Such early detection can ensure that babies receive immediate care, including surgery, for their problems.
In another high-tech development, heart center surgeons have performed 158 pediatric heart transplants ? 17 of them this year ? since the program began 20 years ago.

Texas Children’s Hospital is a treasure of the Houston community.
Meanwhile, in other Medical Center news, Methodist Hospital announced on Friday the Methodist Board’s approval of an initial $30 million endowment to launch the creation of the Southwest’s first neurological institute to advance the discovery of the origins of neurological disease and to provide comprehensive care for patients with disorders and injuries of the brain and spinal cord.
The creation of the institute is the latest step in Methodist’s plan to become an academic institution in the aftermath of this year’s acrimonious split with Baylor College of Medicine, its partner and supplier of physician-scientists and residents for the past 50 years.