Dr. James St. Louis is a specialty care physician board certified in cardiac, thoracic and congenital heart surgery. He is the Bechara Akl, MD, Endowed Chair of Pediatric and Congenital Heart Surgery, Chief of Pediatric Cardiac Surgery, and Co-Director of Inova Children’s Heart Center.

Prior to joining Inova, Dr. St. Louis was the J. Harold Harrison Endowed Chair of Surgery at the Augusta University, University of Georgia Health System and the Chief of Pediatric and Congenital Heart Surgery at the Children’s Hospital of Georgia, where he was also Co-Director of the Pediatric and Congenital Heart Program. Prior to his tenure at Augusta, Dr. St. Louis served as the Surgical Director of Pediatric Heart Transplant and Mechanical Assist Devices at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City.

Dr. St. Louis has been a practicing congenital heart surgeon for more than 20 years, performing 150 major congenital heart operations annually. His clinical expertise has focused on optimizing surgical outcomes in children with neonatal heart defects. His case mix varies from complex neonatal corrective surgery to adult congenital heart surgery. His particular clinical and research interest has been in the failing single ventricle during the neonatal period, with application of appropriate mechanical device support.

Dr. St. Louis is a nationally and internationally recognized leader in the field of pediatric circulatory support. He has spent many years leading pediatric heart transplant and mechanical assist device programs. He has worked on mechanical support of the failing Fontan. He has been recognized with numerous awards for his clinical practice including Top Docs, Best Doctors and Top Surgeon: Congenital Heart Surgeon in both Minneapolis and Kansas City.

Dr. St. Louis has been active with Health Link, a philanthropic group in Minnesota and Missouri, for the last 15 years, traveling with more than 15 medical mission trips to China, conducting numerous congenital heart surgeries and mentoring multiple young Chinese congenital heart surgeons. He also served as the Program Director of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education – certified congenital heart surgery fellowship at Children’s Mercy, Kansas City, for the last three years. Dr. St. Louis’s most recent academic efforts have focused on international outcomes of congenital heart surgery, with more than 70 podium presentations around the world over the last five years.

Dr. St. Louis serves on the governing council of the World Society for Pediatric and Congenital Heart Surgery and is Co-Chair of the World Database for Pediatric and Congenital Heart Surgery. In close collaboration with James Kirklin, MD, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the Kirklin Institute of Research in Surgical Outcomes, he developed an international database to assess the outcomes of congenital heart surgery across the globe. Importantly, he has been a member of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons Workforce on Coding and Reimbursement, contributing to coding issues associated with cardiac and thoracic surgery. He is a member of the 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 World Health Organization to serve as the congenital defect codes for the eleventh revision of the International Classification of Diseases. He also serves on the database and program committees for the Pediatric Cardiac Critical Care Consortium and is Associate Surgery Editor for Cardiology in the Young.

PubMed Publications

Awards/Associations

• Top Doctors, Washingtonian, 2023

Accreditations/Memberships

• American Association for Thoracic Surgery
• Missouri Chapter of the American College of Surgeons
• American College of Surgeons
• European Congenital Heart Surgeons Association
• Missouri State Medical Association
• European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery
• Association for Academic Surgery
• Southern Thoracic Surgical Association
• American College of Cardiology
• American Heart Association
• Georgia Medical Association
• American Medical Association
• Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Society
• American Society for Artificial Internal Organs
• Congenital Heart Surgeons Society
• Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society
• Society of Thoracic Surgeons
• Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society