The published report puts SCMC at 1,876 cardiopulmonary-bypass minimally invasive congenital heart corrective operations in 2025, the largest volume recorded for any centre in China, and sets pediatric and adult congenital surgery on one agenda. Read as planning information, that tells you the category is routine work for this team and that child-to-adult follow-up is framed as one pathway; it tells you nothing about your child’s anatomy, and nothing at all about international admission, language support, price or insurance. Those four are absent from the report and still need a written answer from the hospital.
What the 24 October report says
A congenital heart disease forum held in Shanghai’s Pudong district on 24 October 2026 is the source of a number a family can take back to a hospital and ask about. The report describes the forum as a stream of CMC Week 2026, a minimally invasive cardiovascular surgery congress held alongside an American Association for Thoracic Surgery (AATS) valve symposium in Shanghai, organised jointly by Shanghai Children’s Medical Center (SCMC) of Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Fuwai Hospital of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Guangdong Provincial People’s Hospital, with Professors Zhang Hao, Li Shoujun and Chen Jimei named as forum chairs.
The figure itself comes from a statistics release at the same meeting. The report states that Wang Chunsheng — congress chair and chair of the National Cardiovascular Disease Expert Committee’s Minimally Invasive Cardiovascular Surgery Committee, CMICS — presented the 2025 national statistics for minimally invasive cardiovascular surgery, which record SCMC at 1,876 cardiopulmonary-bypass minimally invasive congenital heart corrective operations for 2025, the largest volume in the country.
The agenda it describes covers three areas: minimally invasive surgery for congenital heart disease, adult congenital heart surgery, and minimally invasive and interventional treatment considered together. The page marks the forum date as 24 October and carries no separate verifiable publication time, so we treat 24 October 2026 as the event date rather than the date the statistics were released.
Reading 1,876 as a planning number
For a family deciding where a child should be operated on, a volume figure answers one question and only one: how routine this category of surgery is for the team that performs it. On the report’s own numbers, roughly 1,900 bypass-based minimally invasive corrective procedures in a single year is standard work rather than an occasional case. That is a real difference between centres, and a reason to put the number to the clinical team and ask them to confirm how they count it.
It answers nothing else. The published report does not define which incisions, techniques or anatomy fall inside ‘minimally invasive’ in this statistic; it does not break the 1,876 down by diagnosis, age, weight or complexity; it gives no mortality, reintervention or complication data; and it gives no figure for the centres ranked below SCMC, so the size of the gap at the top is unknown.
A ranking is also not a quality comparison between institutions, and it is not a statement about your child. Whether a minimally invasive route exists for a particular defect depends on that child’s anatomy, previous surgery, size and other conditions — a judgment for the pediatric cardiac surgeon who reviews the imaging, not for a conference statistic.
Where the number helps and where it stops
| Item in the report | What it supports at team level | What it does not settle |
|---|---|---|
| 1,876 bypass-based minimally invasive congenital heart corrective operations, 2025 | That this category is routine work for one team, at the scale the statistic implies | Whether your child’s defect sits inside that category |
| Highest volume in the country | That SCMC is the largest reported centre in this category for 2025 | Other centres’ volumes, or how large the gap is |
| Agenda covering pediatric and adult congenital surgery | That both stages are treated as one field in discussion | Any named transition programme open to a visiting family |
| International patient detail | Nothing — the subject does not appear | Admission channel, language support, cost, insurance settlement |
The child-to-adult framing in the agenda
The shape of the forum is the second useful item. Setting pediatric congenital surgery and adult congenital surgery side by side, with a third stream on minimally invasive and interventional treatment, is consistent with the child-to-adult continuity framing families hear around this centre: a repaired child is an adult who still needs cardiac follow-up, and the two stages are planned together rather than as separate episodes.
For a child facing a staged repair across several years, or a long surveillance period, that has two practical consequences. It makes it reasonable to ask who holds the records and the decisions between stages, and what happens when your child leaves the pediatric clinic — at what age, into which adult congenital service, and with what written handover. The report describes a conference agenda, not a service, and none of those details appear in it.
What a family arriving from abroad still has to ask
Everything that would change your plans is missing from the report. Those gaps are questions for the hospital, best put in writing before travel and kept as answers you can show on arrival.
- Does the cardiac surgery team accept a new international patient, and through which channel?
- Which imaging, catheterisation and operative records must reach the team before the first visit?
- Can a minimally invasive option be assessed from records alone, or only after an in-person review?
- Which language is used during the consultation, and is an interpreter arranged or brought?
- What written estimate covers evaluation, operation and hospital stay, and what does it exclude?
- How does insurance settlement work for a child who is not resident in China?
Aggregate news is not a plan for your child
- A national ranking describes one centre’s 2025 workload, not any individual outcome.
- No operation or approach is recommended here; suitability is decided by the operating team.
- The report contains no price, waiting time, admission rule or language service to rely on.
- Conference statistics are not confirmation — only the hospital’s own written answers count.
- ChildMedCare is not SCMC and does not speak for it or for any institution named.
How this page was written
This is an editorial summary by a non-clinical editorial team, based on one published conference report dated 24 October 2026. ChildMedCare is not Shanghai Children’s Medical Center, is not the website of any institution named in the report, and does not speak for one; service design, clinical pathways and admission decisions belong to each hospital’s own teams.
The checklist below is a planning tool compiled by our editors for families to use before booking travel. It is not an SCMC requirement for referral, review or admission, and any written instruction from the hospital takes precedence over it. Nothing here is medical advice: whether your child should be operated on, by which route and when, belongs to a licensed clinician who has examined that child.
Planning checklist
- Ask the surgical team to assess your child’s records in writing
- Request the definition and case mix behind the 1,876 figure
- Confirm the international patient channel before you book travel
- Ask in writing which language the consultation uses
- Get a written estimate and ask what it does not include
- Ask who follows your child into adult cardiac care, and when
Sources & further reading
- CMC Week 2026 微创心血管外科大会先心病论坛在沪举办，报告显示上海儿童医学中心 2025 年体外循环微创先心病纠治手术量居全国第一 ↗
Sole basis for this page. It supplies the congenital heart disease forum held in Pudong, Shanghai on 24 October 2026; its description as a stream of the CMC Week 2026 minimally invasive cardiovascular surgery congress held alongside an AATS Shanghai valve symposium; the three organising institutions (SCMC under Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Fuwai Hospital of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Guangdong Provincial People’s Hospital) and the named forum chairs Zhang Hao, Li Shoujun and Chen Jimei; the three agenda directions covering minimally invasive congenital heart surgery, adult congenital heart surgery, and minimally invasive plus interventional treatment; Wang Chunsheng’s role as congress chair and CMICS chair releasing the 2025 national minimally invasive cardiovascular surgery statistics; and the reported figure of 1,876 cardiopulmonary-bypass minimally invasive congenital heart corrective operations at SCMC for 2025, ranked first nationally. The report is silent on technique definitions, case mix, outcome data, other centres’ volumes, international patient admission, language support, cost and insurance, all of which are stated here as unconfirmed; the page as accessed carried no separate verifiable publication timestamp.
Sources checked November 2, 2026. Planning checklists are ChildMedCare editorial guidance; they are not hospital admission requirements.