Charles D. Fraser Jr., M.D.

Charles D. Fraser Jr., M.D.
Since joining Texas Children’s Heart Center in
1995, Dr. Charles Fraser’s primary focus has been to create a first class team of physicians and medical staff dedicated to the surgical care of infants, children and teens with congenital heart diseases. Fraser is skilled in handling hypoplastic left heart syndrome, Transposition of the Great Arteries, truncus arteriosus and other complex anomalies. Under his leadership, the success rate of surgeries at the Heart Center has increased to 98 percent in 2004.

A Texas native, Fraser graduated with honors in
mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1980 and received his medical degree in 1984 from the University of Texas Medical School at Galveston.

Following his residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital and fellowships at The Royal Children’s Hospital in Australia, Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Texas Heart Institute, Fraser joined Baylor College of Medicine as professor and chief of the Congenital Heart Surgery Division and became cardiac surgeon in-charge and chief of the Division of Congenital Heart Surgery at Texas Children’s Hospital. Today, Fraser also holds the Donovan Chair in Congenital Heart Surgery at Texas Children’s. His wife, Helen, is the daughter of famed heart surgeon, Dr. Denton Cooley.

In his work, Fraser points out that children are not simply scaled-down adults. “The notion of having a heart center specifically for children is not common, but it is becoming more and more appreciated. It used to be that children were cared for as a subset of an adult program, which is just the wrong way to do it,” he said.

“The unique problems children encounter and the medical issues they face are very different from adults. Having a program solely dedicated to the treatment of children with heart disease as we do here at Texas Children’s Heart Center is crucial for the health and successful outcomes of our patients.”

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