James Strainic, MD

About

James Strainic, MD, is a pediatric cardiologist and director of the Fetal Heart Program in the Congenital Heart and Director of Pediatric Cardiology Outpatient Services at the Congenital Heart Collaborative at University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital.

As director of the Fetal Heart Program, Dr. Strainic oversees all aspects of maternal-fetal cardiology care at UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital. The fetal heart center offers fetal cardiology diagnostic imaging and fetal cardiac intervention. The fetal cardiac intervention team is a 12-member team, representing obstetrics & gynecology, maternal fetal medicine, pediatric cardiology, pediatric interventional cardiology, pediatric anesthesia, OB anesthesia from UH Rainbow, Nationwide Children’s Hospital and MacDonald Women’s Hospital, that performs fetal aortic valvuloplasty. This fetal heart program is the only one in Ohio to offer fetal aortic valvuloplasty and one of only in 10 in the nation. The team provides advanced care locally in north east Ohio and internationally with patients coming as far as the United Arab Emirates.

Critical to infants with developing congenital heart disease, fetal aortic valvuloplasty is a unique procedure that uses ultrasound guidance and a catheter-based approach to gain access to the fetal heart, subsequently opening the aortic valve using a tiny, inflated balloon. This increases blood flow through the left ventricle of the heart to help its development and prevent the progression of hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS). The goal of the minimally invasive fetal procedure is to attempt to reverse the developing HLHS and decrease the number of open heart surgeries for the child later in life – or eliminate them entirely.

Dr. Strainic is also an assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. He earned his undergraduate degree in natural sciences at Xavier University in Cincinnati and his medical degree at University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. He completed his residency training in pediatrics and fellowship training in pediatric cardiology at UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital.

Dr. Strainic is active in the field of pediatric cardiology research. His published work includes peer-reviewed journal articles, abstracts and book chapters and he has presented at international, national and regional medical conferences and meetings.