Are we improving after 10 years of humanitarian paediatric cardiac assistance?

Paediatric cardiovascular services are frequently absent or poorly developed in many countries around the world. Our foundation made 83 trips in support of cardiovascular services between April 1993 and March 2003 to help alleviate this problem. In this study, we present an analysis of our results over these period of 10 years.

We performed a review of all available records relating to the trips, including patient databases, audited financial statements, donated product inventory lists, lists of team members, and follow-up data from the host sites concerning the state of the patients treated.

We made 83 trips to 14 countries, 40 of these being in Central Europe, 5 in Eastern Europe, 10 in Caribbean, and Central America, 18 in South America, 9 in Asia, and 1 in the Middle East. In the first 5 years, we made 23, as opposed to 60 in the second 5 years, this difference being significant (p less than 0.01). The total number of primary operations performed over 10 years was 1,580. The number of procedures performed yearly increased over the two intervals from 97.0 plus or minus 32.7 to 219.0 plus or minus 41.7, p less than 0.002. The probability of survival between the periods increased from 84.6 to 93.3 per cent, and this was also significantly different (p less than 0.001). Overall, the rate of survival for the period of 10 years was 90.5 per cent. Moreover, the value of services donated to support each trip also differed significantly, decreasing from 105,900 dollars plus or minus 14,581 dollars for the first period to 54,617 dollars plus or minus 11,425 dollars for the second period (p less than 0.001).

Improving paediatric cardiac services in under-served countries requires significant financial and personnel commitments, but can produce reasonable outcomes.