For Najat Badru, a 30-year wait to undergo surgery without opening her heart to close a hole took her to various hospitals around the country without success.

Last week, she was among 25 patients with different heart conditions attended to by a team of specialised Turkish cardiologists at Mombasa’s Coast General Teaching and Referral Hospital.

She was the first patient attended by the Turkish cardiologists who arrived in the coastal city to conduct life-saving cardiac surgery and interventional cardiac catheterisation among children with congenital heart defects.

“I was born with the condition and my parent could not afford to take me to India for surgery.

I resorted to live with the condition until last September, when I heard of the specialists visit.”

According to Vaghela Vinesh, Head of Internal Medicine at the regional referral hospital, Najat is among 25 patients, who have undergone Patent Ductus Arteriosus (PDA), Coronary Artery Disease (CDA) and Ventricular septal defect (VSD) heart surgeries.

Cardiologists say PDA is an abnormal connection between the aorta and the pulmonary artery in the heart interfering with the normal flow of blood.

In patients with PDA condition, blood flows directly to the aorta bypassing the normal process of pulmonary artery carrying blood from the right ventricle (heart’s right lower chamber) to the lungs for oxygen and back through the aorta to the body.

Although Naajat’s condition was not a life threatening, she was apprehensive of undergoing the open-heart surgery fearing complications related to such procedure.

“I waited all these years because my situation was not life threatening. I had to use some medicines while waiting for an opportunity of specialised heart surgery without any complication,” she added in an exclusive interview with Kenya News Agency.

Open heart surgery involving opening of chest wall for cardiologists to access and operate patients’ heart, a process that sometimes could lead to complications including broken bones and longer recovery time.

Dr Veghela added the exercise that started on Sunday predominately for children with various heart conditions, also benefited adults like Najat, who were born with heart conditions.

The team targets about 80 patients before concluding the exercise on Saturday.

He said the Turkish cardiologists using modern technology conducted minimal invasive heart surgeries to patients with severe conditions that would have required their chest walls opened for surgeons to operate on the hearts.

“With these interventions, we would be able to close these holes in the heart without any operation.

It is just access through the groin, from where the whole procedure is conducted without any major complication, and the next day, if all is well, the patient is discharged to go home,” he added.

Dr Vaghela said the surgeries were made at a new catheterization laboratory fitted with assorted modern equipment required for heart surgeries, which former Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Mombasa Governor Hassan Joho opened two weeks ago.

Mombasa Deputy Governor William Kingi said each patient would have paid more than Sh1 million for the surgery.

“We however thank a charity organisation from the United Kingdom for bringing the team of cardiologists from Turkey to carry out the procedure free of charge,” added Dr Kingi.

Dr Kingi added that the exercise also provided an opportunity for local cardiologists and other medical expertise to learn new heart surgery skills and technics from the visiting Turkish specialists.

“Capacity building of our medical team is one of pillars in our manifesto and indeed this exercise also provided an opportunity for our team to learn new ideas,” he said. – KNA