Best Paediatric Cardiology Doctors in Delhi NCR, India

1. When to Seek Help Urgently

Read this before anything else on the page. Some signs in a baby or child need assessment today, not at the next appointment.

Go to an emergency department or call emergency services if you see:

• Blue or grey colour in the lips, tongue, gums or nail beds

• Fast or laboured breathing, grunting, or the ribs drawing in with each breath

• Episodes where your child turns blue, goes limp, or is hard to wake

• A baby who sweats heavily during feeds and cannot finish them

• Sudden collapse, fainting, or a seizure

• Cold, mottled skin with poor responsiveness

Ask for an urgent but not emergency appointment if your child is not gaining weight as expected, tires far more easily than others the same age, or has chest pain or palpitations when active.

Most children with a murmur have nothing wrong with them. That reassurance belongs after the list above rather than before it, because those signs can mean a defect needing treatment quickly.

2. Paediatric Cardiology Is a Separate Specialty

This matters more than anything else you will read here. Paediatric cardiologists and paediatric cardiac surgeons train separately from their adult counterparts and practise separately.

A child's heart is not a smaller version of an adult one. Most children's heart disease is present from birth while most adult heart disease is acquired later. The anaesthesia differs, the intensive care differs, the equipment is sized differently, and follow-up runs across decades of growth.

Seniority in adult cardiac surgery does not carry over. If your child is offered an adult cardiac surgeon, ask how many children of that age and weight they operate on each year, then consider a second opinion.

For the full clinical guide to children's heart conditions, see paediatric cardiologists across India, which covers diagnosis, treatment routes, risks and follow-up in detail.

3. Where the Units Are

Paediatric cardiac programmes in the region operate at several established centres, spread across the NCR rather than concentrated in central Delhi:

• Fortis Escorts Heart Institute, Okhla, Delhi

• Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, Delhi

• Apollo Hospitals, New Delhi

• Fortis Memorial Research Institute, Gurugram

• Medanta, Gurugram

• Marengo Asia Hospitals, Faridabad

The listing on this page shows which unit each specialist works at. Ask any of them how long the paediatric cardiac programme has run, whether the intensive care unit is paediatric and cardiac rather than shared, and who covers it overnight.

4. What Is Treated Here

The region's units handle the full range, from simple defects closed through a catheter to staged repairs in newborns. Severity varies enormously within any named condition, so your child's own anatomy determines what is possible.

Holes between the chambers

Many small openings between the heart's chambers close on their own and need only monitoring. Larger ones may be closed with a device passed through a catheter, or surgically, depending on size and position.

Tetralogy of Fallot

A combination of four features that reduces blood flow to the lungs, and one cause of what is called a blue baby. Tetralogy of Fallot surgery is usually done in the first two years, and the timing depends on oxygen levels and anatomy.

Transposition of the great arteries

The two main arteries leave the heart the wrong way round. This needs treating in the newborn period, and the switch operation for transposition is time-critical rather than something to schedule at leisure.

Single ventricle conditions

Where only one pumping chamber works adequately, treatment is staged across several operations in the first years of life. The final stage is commonly Fontan completion.

Understand that this is palliation and not cure. It improves oxygen levels and quality of life substantially, and these children need lifelong specialist follow-up.

Narrowings, valves and rhythm problems

Narrowing of the aorta or of a valve may be widened with a balloon through a catheter or repaired surgically, and some valves need replacing as a child grows. Rhythm disorders can occur in a structurally normal heart and are managed with medication, a catheter procedure or occasionally a pacemaker.

Rheumatic heart disease

Valve damage following untreated throat infection and rheumatic fever, still a significant cause of childhood heart disease in parts of Africa and South Asia. It is preventable, and long-term preventive antibiotic treatment after rheumatic fever reduces further attacks.

That treatment continues for years and has to be arranged at home rather than in India, so ask specifically how it will be organised.

For the surgical pathway across all of these, children's heart surgery pathways covers what an operation involves.

5. Delhi NCR Is Not One City

The region covers Delhi plus Gurugram, Noida, Faridabad and Ghaziabad, and the paediatric cardiac units are spread across it. A hospital described as being in Delhi may sit forty kilometres from another you are comparing it against, in traffic that turns that into two hours.

This matters far more here than for a short adult procedure. You may be in the region for four to six weeks, travelling back for weekly outpatient reviews with a recovering child.

Find out exactly which city your unit is in and stay within a short drive of it. Proximity to the hospital beats proximity to anything else.

6. Timing, Air Quality and Infection Season

Air quality across the NCR is poor from roughly late October to January. That same window is the respiratory infection season, and the two together matter more for a child after heart surgery than for most patients.

Two specific things to raise with your surgeon. First, whether your child's condition involves the lungs or pulmonary pressures, because that changes how much the air quality matters. Second, that a child who catches a cold before surgery will usually have the operation postponed, which extends your stay and your costs.

February to April and September to October are the more comfortable months, and May and June are very hot, which affects a recovering child outside hospital more than it affects the surgery.

None of this justifies delaying urgent treatment. For a newborn needing a switch operation, or a child with worsening oxygen levels, timing is decided by the heart and not the weather. Where surgery is elective rather than urgent, ask the question.

7. How Long You Will Be Here

Plan for considerably longer than the hospital stay, and longer than most families expect.

A catheter procedure may need only about a week in the country. Open repair such as tetralogy of Fallot generally means ten to sixteen days in hospital followed by two to four weeks of weekly outpatient review, so four to six weeks in total, and six to eight weeks for complex variants or repeat surgery.

Staged single ventricle surgery is longer again. For a Fontan completion, plan on fourteen to twenty-one days in hospital and six to ten weeks in the country before clearance for a long flight.

Your child needs written fit-to-fly clearance, and it is conditional on oxygen levels, resolved fluid collections, a healed wound, stable medication and adequate feeding. Get the expected timeline in writing before you book anything, and budget for it to extend.

8. Cost

We publish no figure on this page. The total depends on the specific repair, your child's age and weight, how many days of intensive care are needed, and whether more than one procedure is required.

Published research notes that congenital heart surgery is expensive and that families frequently meet the cost themselves, which makes an itemised written estimate essential rather than a formality.

Ask for it broken down, and check specifically whether these are inside it:

• Extended intensive care, if recovery is slower than planned

• Repeat investigations on arrival, where existing scans are older than the unit accepts

• Any staged or second procedure

• Complications and their treatment

• Accommodation for the weeks after discharge, and a stay for both parents

• The weekly outpatient reviews before fit-to-fly clearance

That last group is the one families underestimate. Four to six weeks of accommodation for two adults is a substantial part of the total, and it is rarely inside a surgical package.

9. Six Weeks in Delhi NCR With a Child

This is a different kind of trip from an adult procedure, and the practicalities deserve planning before you fix dates.

India's medical visa route allows for accompanying attendants, generally up to two, applied for alongside your child's visa and requiring a hospital invitation letter and cost estimate. Some nationalities must apply in person at an embassy rather than online, which changes how much notice you need. Ask us to arrange the documents to cover everyone travelling.

Book accommodation with a kitchen. Over four to six weeks with a child who is eating poorly and on a restricted diet, being able to cook familiar food stops being a luxury.

Ask the hospital directly about parent facilities: whether one of you can stay overnight on the ward, what the visiting arrangements are in intensive care, and whether there is somewhere to prepare food or express milk. Decide what happens about siblings and schooling before you commit, because six weeks is a term's disruption.

10. Follow-up After You Fly Home

Congenital heart disease is followed for years, often into adult life, even after a repair that went perfectly. Some children need a further procedure later, and some valves need replacing as they grow.

Before you leave, collect the operation note, the discharge summary, all imaging, a medicine list with doses, and a written follow-up schedule saying which reviews and scans fall due when. Your paediatrician or cardiologist at home will work from these documents.

Settle who is responsible for what. Ask whether the NCR unit will review echocardiograms sent from home, at what intervals, and how that is arranged. A child treated abroad with no follow-up plan is the outcome to avoid.

After open surgery you will also be told not to lift your child under the arms for roughly six to eight weeks while the breastbone knits, and to lift from the bottom instead. Practise that before the operation rather than learning it at discharge.

11. Choosing a Team Rather Than a Surgeon

For a child's heart operation the unit matters more than any individual name. Weigh these:

• Whether children's cardiac care is its own service or part of adult cardiac surgery

• The surgeon's volume of your child's specific repair, at your child's age and weight

• Whether there is a dedicated paediatric cardiac anaesthetist

• Whether the intensive care is paediatric and cardiac, staffed by intensivists rather than shared cover

• Nursing ratios, and whether the nurses are specialist paediatric cardiac nurses

• Whether extracorporeal support is available if a child deteriorates after surgery

• Whether cases go before a joint cardiology and surgery meeting

• Arrangements for follow-up from your home country

• Whether one named person will speak to you each day during intensive care

Years of experience alone tells you very little here, and a long adult cardiac career tells you close to nothing.

12. Questions to Ask Before You Consent

Ask for written answers, particularly if you are travelling.

• What exactly is my child's diagnosis, and can you show me on the images?

• How many of this specific repair does this unit do each year, and at my child's age and weight?

• Is a catheter procedure possible instead of surgery, and why is it or is it not?

• What happens if we wait, and how long can we safely wait?

• Is my child's weight or nutrition a factor, and should that be addressed first?

• Who will anaesthetise my child, and are they a paediatric cardiac anaesthetist?

• Who staffs the paediatric cardiac intensive care unit overnight?

• How many days of intensive care and how long in hospital do you expect?

• How many weeks in the country before you would clear my child to fly?

• What are the risks specific to this repair for this child?

• Will my child need further operations later in life?

• What medicines will we go home on, and for how long?

• Will you review scans we send from home, and how often?

• What are the signs after discharge that mean we should seek help urgently?

• What happens, and who pays, if a complication develops while we are still in India?

13. Travelling With a Child From Abroad

A substantial share of the children we help come from the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia and Africa. Country guides covering flights, visa documents and costs:

• Travelling from Iraq with a child

• Travelling from Oman with a child

• Travelling from Bangladesh with a child

• Travelling from Turkmenistan with a child

• Travelling from Tanzania with a child

• Travelling from Kenya with a child

• Travelling from Zambia with a child

• Travelling from Zimbabwe with a child

• Travelling from Ghana with a child

• Travelling from South Sudan with a child

Where a paediatric cardiac service exists closer to home, using it is usually better for a child. Travel earns its place for complex repairs, for defects needing a team that performs them frequently, or where waiting locally would put a child at risk.

Medical Review

Medically reviewed by: Dr. Shabnam

Credentials: BDS, 5 Years of Experiences in medical content writing and reviewing

Last reviewed: July 2026

Prepared with reference to published paediatric cardiology guidance and peer-reviewed literature on congenital heart disease.

Content review: Abdul Azeem, MA (Public Health specialisation). Editorial review only, not clinical review.