Hospital support cuts heart surgery wait

Published: 01/03/2009 05:00

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More people are receiving heart surgery in Ho Chi Minh City than ever before after a decade of technology transfer programs between the municipal Heart Institute and local hospitals.

Figures released by the institute last week showed that around 2,500 patients are waiting to undergo heart surgery at the institute, only one-quarter of the 10,000 that were waiting when the list was at its longest point.

The cut has been attributed to several programs that have focused on boosting heart surgery capacity at hospitals around the city while also expanding operations at the institute.

Although more people are now struggling with heart diseases than before, the institute’s Director Phan Kim Phuong says the institute has been able to catch up by outsourcing work to hospitals where heart surgery was previously not performed.

Phuong said the institute has transferred technology to about 10 local hospitals such as HCMC’s Children’s Hospital No.1, Thong Nhat Hospital, 115 People’s Hospital and others in Hanoi, Hue city, Da Nang and Can Tho.

She said those hospitals have performed more than 10,000 heart operations since 2000, in addition to the 1,200 operations every year at the institute.

She said the institute was continuing the programs, which began in 2000 and include doctor training initiatives.

The project helped Tam Duc Heart Hospital open its doors in early 2006 with doctors trained at the Heart Institute.

Chu Trong Hiep, deputy director and chief heart surgeon of the hospital, said more than 900 heart patients underwent surgeries at Tam Duc last year.

“We expect to operate on 1,000 patients this year and 1,200 next year ,” Hiep said.

He said more than half of the hospital’s patients had been children.

HCMC Children’s Hospital No.1, which began offering heart operations in mid-2007 thanks to institute support, has been operating more than ten cases a month, some of them on severalmonth-old babies that had heart diseases at birth.

Director Tang Chi Thuong said the hospital “will establish a center specializing in children’s cardiology to perform surgery on more complicated cases.”

But the facilities at local hospitals still can’t meet the demand of the 2,500 to 5,000 child heart patients that need surgery every year.

Reported by Thanh Tung

Provide by Vietnam Travel

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