Doctors tackle tough cases
during ‘Heart Week’

Mainland and Honolulu specialists tackled some complex heart cases in the first of five annual "Heart Weeks" at Straub Clinic & Hospital and Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children.

All patients referred by island doctors for congenital heart surgery or cardiac catheterization were reviewed at a conference held before the special week, which started Jan. 31, said Dr. James Sim, pediatric cardiologist.

The next Heart Week for complicated cases will begin March 28.

The patients, mostly children, would otherwise have to go to the mainland for the procedures, Sim said. "Most patients would rather stay here."

Working with Sim was Dr. John Moore, interventional cardiologist and Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory director at Mattel Children's Hospital at UCLA, and Dr. Venu Reddy, Kapiolani pediatric cardiologist.

They performed non-surgical procedures in Straub's catheterization lab to correct congenital heart defects on 10 children.

Dr. Carlos Moreno, director of Kapiolani's Pediatric Cardiac Program, and Dr. John Lamberti, pediatric cardiac surgeon at the Lucille Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford University, did five operations on children ranging from 5 months to 8 years old.

Lamberti has been working with Moreno's cardiac surgery program for about 10 years. They've done 350 or more operations, Moreno said.

He said they're taking cases now that are a little more complicated than average but most are well-known operations. Most newborns are sent to mainland hospitals for heart surgery, Moreno said.

Moore was invited to come here in 2003 to help establish an interventional service at Straub. The cardiologists treat heart defects with minimally invasive procedures that result in less physiologic stress and pain and almost no scarring, Sim said, adding that patients can usually return home the same day.

He said Straub and Kapiolani, sister hospitals, plan to expand the Heart Week program with Dr. George Van Hare, director of the Pediatric Arrhythmia Center at Stanford University and the University of California at San Francisco. Van Hare is a specialist in heart rhythm disorders.

"We're becoming more of a comprehensive cardiovascular care (center) for children," Sim said, referring to the programs with renowned mainland doctors.