Cardiac Humanitarian Surgery. An Active Partership with the Cardiac Surgical Department of the Uni Hospitals of Strasbourg Since More than 20 Years

Seance of wednesday 20 december 2017 (CHIRURGIE HUMANITAIRE : 20 ANS DE FORMATION CHIRURGICALE SUR PLACE)

DOI number : 10.2699/x7bp-7m33/emem.2017.3.018

Abstract

Many non-governmental organizations deliver to-date pediatric cardiac surgery in low-income countries. ADS (Aide au Développement de la Santé) has tied a partnership with the Cardiac surgical Department of the Uni Hospitals of Strasbourg since now approximately 25 years. As a result, treatment has been offered to 2184 patients suffering from a curable cardiac disease. They came from nearly 20 different countries. But the very largest number came from 2 countries: 380 patients from Ukraine and 1703 from Laos. As a whole 1259 patients had a congenital cardiac defect, 826 had a valvular disease, 2 had ischemic pathology and 97 had miscellaneous cardiological pathologies. Providing surgery to the patients has been an important step of the contribution, but even more so were formation of a local team, transfer of knowledge as well as financial and structural assistance. Everything had to be developed from the scratch: formation, equipment, biomedical engineering and finally the edification of a new cardiac institute, necessary to perform cardiac surgery according to modern standards. A self-performing local team could progressively emerge; it could manage and operate 395 patients undependably from any presence of any European doctor, by end of 2017.
The results of the team are good, and cardiac surgery is now an established specialty in Laos. The spectrum of patients will be broadened to ischemic heart disease to offer the population a complete array in cardiac surgery. This goal illustrates the achievement of 15 years of active humanitarian collaboration.