Vedanta Dariya, M.D.

Vedanta Dariya, M.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at UT Southwestern Medical Center. He is a board-certified neonatal intensivist in the Division of Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine and at the level IV NICU at Children’s Medical Center Dallas.

Dr. Dariya attended medical school in Mumbai, India at the Padmashree Dr. D.Y. Patil Medical College. He completed a pediatric residency at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in Shreveport and gained advance training through a fellowship in Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston.

Certified by the American Board of Pediatrics, he joined the faculty at UT Southwestern Medical Center in 2014.

Dr. Dariya has held many titles, chief among them the Associate Medical Director of the Level IV NICU at Children’s Health Dallas. His research and clinical interest center on the medical care of babies with complex medical and surgical conditions. He has an interest in the cardio-respiratory physiology of neonates, with special focus on babies with Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia (CDH).

He currently serves as the site investigator for the NICHD Neonatal Research Network-sponsored randomized controlled trial evaluating the use of Milrinone in patients with CDH. He is also an active member of the Children’s Hospital Neonatal Consortium (CHNC) Focus Group on CDH, a group of level IV NICUs across North America working on optimizing the care of these babies. He is also part of the ECMO team in the NICU, and a member of the CHNC ECMO Focus Group.

As the Director of NICU transport and outreach at Children’s Health, Dr. Dariya has helped create one of the country’s first tele-transport programs for neonates transported the NICU and the Tele-Cooling program for babies who develop Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy. He is also a co-investigator on a multi-center trial evaluating the use of tele-medicine on transport.

Dr. Dariya has championed a number of quality improvement and safety initiatives to improve the care of infants in the NICU. He has been involved in several projects to decrease hospital-acquired conditions in the NICU, particularly unplanned extubations and central line-associated blood stream infections. He has written the Cochrane review on the use of cuffed endotracheal tubes in neonates and continues to pursue improved airway management of NICU patients through a project to streamline the intubation process in the neonatal unit. Dr. Dariya is also working with the pediatric anesthesiologists at Children’s Health to improve rates of post-operative hyperglycemia and optimize team communication during transitions of care between the ICU and OR teams.