Four cardiologists have announced their resignation from the CHT. The news comes as a cardiac microsurgery mission from metropolitan public hospitals is in New Caledonia. She operated on about forty patients in 15 days. A third of the operations consisted of coronary bypasses. Everything had been anticipated upstream by videoconference, with local practitioners.
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Published on June 15, 2022 at 6:04 p.m.,
updated on June 15, 2022 at 7:19 p.m.
This is what is called an on-the-spot course: on the one hand, the cardiac surgeon from Pitié Salpêtrière in Paris and on the other, an emergency doctor and cardiologist from the Médipôle. The operation is exceptional for Caledonia: a coronary bypass. In short, it consists of bypassing a clogged artery by creating a bridge with a healthy artery.
« These are very specialized operations. In New Caledonia, the surgeons do fairly general surgery, but we don’t do anything cardiac at all. Usually patients are evacuated to Australia “, explains Nathalie Rey, operating theater nurse at the CHT.
To operate on a suspended heart, between 4 and 8 hours of operation, the anesthetist must dose the drugs with infinite precision.
Several operating theaters are operating at the same time, in an identical configuration, and all the metropolitan teams are unanimous: “We see the immense progress. Today, I operate with an entirely New Caledonian team by my side, without external supervision.“, explains Doctor Pierre Demondion, cardiac surgeon at the Pitié Salpêtrière public hospital.
Effective, if the memories of the technical gestures persist. To help Caledonians, Agnès Jue-Denis, an operating room nurse specializing in Metropolitan France, prepares lessons for them. “I will leave them intervention sheets with the important points that should not be forgotten and which will allow them, for the next missions, to benefit from real assistance to take care of the patients.“
But after the announcement of the resignation of four cardiologists of the Caledonian service, the next mission risks being simply cancelled. Doctor Mathieu Debauchez, boss of this mission, is very clear: no efficient cardiology service, no cardiac surgery.