Heidi J. Dalton MD

Dr. Dalton has been a leader in pediatric critical care and extracorporeal life support for over 20 years. She received her undergraduate degree at Michigan State University and received her MD degree at Wayne State University. She completed pediatric training at George Washington University (Children’s National Medical Center) and her critical care training at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.

Dr. Dalton worked as a Pediatric ICU attending and director of ECLS (starting both the pediatric and adult ECMO program) at Georgetown University Hospital (1991-1999). She became the Medical Director at Children’s National Medical Center from 1999-2009 and was the pediatric and cardiac ECMO director there and a Professor of Pediatrics at George Washington University. She moved to Arizona in 2009 to become the Chief of Critical Care and Director of ECLS at Phoenix Children’s Hospital, where she was also Professor of Child Health at University of Arizona-College of Medicine, Phoenix and Professor at the Barrow Neurologic Institute. She left PCH in 2014 to provide consultant expertise to others in the areas of extracorporeal life support and critical care medicine and continue research efforts in these areas. Dr. Dalton was inducted as a Master of Critical Care (one of only 56 such recipients to date) by the American College of Critical Care Medicine and Society of Critical Care Medicine in 2014.

Dr. Dalton has authored over 50 peer-reviewed articles and numerous book chapters and invited reviews on extracorporeal life support, sepsis, respiratory failure and other critical care topics. She is a sought-after national and international speaker, provides program reviews to other centers, holds leadership positions within the Society of Critical Care Medicine and the Extracorporeal Life Support Organization and provides reviewer expertise to journals such as Critical Care Medicine, Lancet, Pediatrics, Pediatric Critical Care Medicine and Circulation, among others. Her current research focus is on elimination of bleeding and thrombotic complications during extracorporeal support and identification of predictors for mortality in ECMO patients.