Dale Burkett, M.D.
Assistant Professor of Pediatric Cardiology
Director of Echocardiography Education
Children’s Hospital Colorado
University of Colorado
I am a pediatric cardiologist at Children’s Hospital Colorado and the University of Colorado. I am an assistant professor in my 7th year, having graduated from the University of Colorado School of Medicine and the Children’s Hospital Colorado pediatric and pediatric cardiology fellowship. I am the Director of Echocardiography Education for our pediatric cardiology and advanced cardiac imaging fellowships. I specialize in anatomic and procedural 3-dimensional echocardiography, in addition to transthoracic and transesophageal echocardiography.
I am actively involved in 3-dimensional echocardiography research and ventricular interdependence in pediatric pulmonary hypertension. I am an active member and Fellow of the American Society of Echocardiography, and a member of the Society of Pediatric Echocardiography since I was a pediatric cardiology fellow.
I am a passionate believer in the ability of echocardiography to help diagnose and manage congenital heart disease, and have dedicated a substantial amount of effort to helping teach echocardiography to fellows and sonographers. I stand behind the core mission of SOPE and the effort to promote education, advocacy, research and program development. I have made significant strides within our institution to promote such values and I am excited to bring this to SOPE. I am eager to serve our national echocardiographic community through SOPE.
Seda Tierney, MD, FASE, FAHA, FAAP
Associate Professor, Pediatrics
Director of Research and Co-Director of Quality Improvement, Non-Invasive Imaging Laboratory
Director of Pediatric Vascular Research Laboratory
Co-Director SPECTR (Stanford Pediatric Echo Core Imaging and Translational Research Laboratory)
Stanford MCHRI Faculty Scholar
I would like to thank the committee for the opportunity to join the SOPE Executive Board as a Secretary. I am a Pediatric Cardiologist subspecialized in Echocardiography and a Physician Scientist with expertise in noninvasive assessment of vascular health in children
and tele-interventions to improve cardiovascular health and care of children with cardiac conditions.
My imaging journey started on the East Coast where I completed an Advanced Imaging year after my Pediatric Cardiology fellowship training at Columbia University, New York, a very special experience under the leadership of late Dr. Charlie Kleinman. In 2004, I began my academic career as Imaging Faculty at Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School where I spent more than seven years. I then moved to Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, Stanford University where I am currently an Associate Professor in Pediatrics, Pediatric
Cardiology.
In my role as Director of Research and Co-Director of Quality Improvement in the Non-Invasive Imaging Laboratory at Stanford,
I have been in a great position to identify and study various issues of importance in our field such as utility of echocardiography postoperatively, adherence to current imaging guidelines in congenital heart disease, cardiac complexity scoring in pediatric echocardiography, and use of parental echo training as part of clinical care.
I have a strong interest in utilization of echocardiography to provide clinical cardiologists data that could help fine-tune patient management and improve outcomes. As part of this interest, I have held leadership roles in two large multi-center protocols run by the
Pediatric Heart Network with echo-based endpoints; the Ventricular Volume Variability in Congestive Cardiomyopathy (VVV), and the Marfan Trial. This multi-center experience has been particularly valuable for not only acquiring skillsets to assure technical
quality of studies obtained in several sites by providing training and timely analysis, but also for developing a keen sense for team dynamics and collaborative effort. With this foundation, I have been able to successfully establish the Pediatric Imaging Core
Laboratory in collaboration with one of my colleagues here at Stanford. Since the start of COVID-19, I have also been working on implementing parentally-acquired home echo images into clinical care, based on the successful results of my research utilizing this
approach in pediatric heart transplant and Marfan patients.
Another role I have been able to serve within our field is in vascular health assessment of children and interventions to improve cardiovascular health. Children with traditional risk factors as well as children with cardiac conditions such as heart transplantation,
coarctation of the aorta, Marfan syndrome, or Kawasaki Disease are at risk for worse long-term outcomes due to abnormal vascular health. As children seldom reach hard end points in clinical trials, reliable noninvasive measures of subclinical markers such as arterial
stiffness or endothelial function can be instrumental as measures of outcomes in such studies. I began evaluating methods of assessment while at Boston Children’s Hospital, where I built a vascular research program. While at Stanford, I continued this work
by founding the Pediatric Vascular Research Laboratory. My work in this field over has proven that these non-invasive modalities are feasible and reproducible in children. As my interest naturally phased into lifestyle interventions to improve vascular health, I have
successfully incorporated telehealth into my tools to deliver these interventions which have been funded by the American Heart Association, National Marfan Foundation, Maternal Child Health Institute at Stanford, and the NIH/NHLBI.
And most recently, I have had the privilege to work with the spectacular SOPE Education Committee where we have embarked on our great educational series, the SPEED webinars. This has been a great experience as we all felt that we were able to provide a
great educational platform to fellows, sonographers, and faculty. We have received great feedback from our colleagues which has
been very rewarding.
I believe that my interests, expertise, and experience align well with the vision of the Society of Pediatric Echocardiography, where I could contribute to the overarching goal of advancing the field of pediatric and congenital heart disease through research,
quality improvement, education, standardization, and increased awareness. Thank you for your kind consideration.