The team of cardio-surgeons from Italy has come already the third time to National Scientific Surgery Centre (NSSC) named after Syzganov. During the visit the Italian doctors carry out diagnostics and treatment of Kazakhstan children with congenital heart diseases (CHD). Such trips become possible only with assistance of the charitable organizations of Italy and Kazakhstan. From the Italian party this project supports fund «Aiutare i bambini», with Kazakhstan – welfare funds "AYALА" and "DARA”. We talk with cardio-surgeon Vitaly Pak who lives and works many years in Italy, but doesn't forget about the problems of the country where he was born.
- Vitaly, could you tell please when an idea about this project have been initiated?
- Hello, working as nursery cardio-surgeon in the Italian hospital “Ospedali Riuniti di Bergamo” many years I have participated in similar humanitarian projects in other countries. Since 2006 our Italian team of doctors has frequently visited hospitals in Russia, Ukraine, Morocco, Albania, Romania and China. All these trips have been organized by the well-known Italian children's cardio-surgeon professor Vittorio Vannini who on a voluntary basis many years helps doctors to raise their professional level in a heart surgery and thus to improve quality of treatment of children with congenital heart diseases. Therefore in 2008, in order to involve more countries, I have suggested to organize trips to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan where I have lots of friends among doctors. That was the prehistory of our first our trip to Almaty in February 2009.
- How many all children have been operated for 3 trips, and what are the results?
- Yes, in April 2011 we have been to Institute named after Syzganova already 3rd time. For three trips to Almaty we have operated more than 35 children of different ages with various congenital defects. Results of operations are good, for example, together with the Kazakhstan doctors we have executed some difficult cardio-surgeries of children up to 6 months old. But such procedures are high risky for children and sometimes such kids don't go through surgery and die in resuscitation. Fortunately such cases aren't frequent in our practice.
- During previous two trips you operated children with the most different heart diseases. And now is your current visit essentially differ from the previous?
- Usually during such visits we operated those children who require necessary or urgent surgical interventions, or it was special difficult clinical case. During this visit we planned to execute surgery of children with certain pathology, for example a congenital defect which should be operated in most cases till 1 year of life of the child. About 10 children of different ages have been examined and they have the diagnosis which has been mostly interesting for us. As per our opinion among this number of children we managed to select those children who are subject to be operated, and these surgeries would be useful for our Kazakhstan doctors to learn more about techniques of operations and nursing of children in resuscitation department.
- Which doctors of other clinics, except NSSC named after Syzganov, did take part in seminars?
- Our visit to the Syzganov’s NSSC has caused interest not only in Almaty. There were always many doctors who observed our teamwork in surgical department and in rooms of intensive therapy. It was interesting to communicate to doctors from other cities of Kazakhstan – Chimkent, Taraz, our colleagues from Dushanbe have also been there.
- What difficulties you have faced?
- During our work we haven't experienced any special difficulties, as all doctors from Italy already have experience in other countries. We haven't experienced any language barrier because the volunteers who perfectly speak Italian helped us. I am glad to express huge gratitude to the Kazakhstan welfare funds "AYALAа" and "Dara” for the excellent organization of our visit. We had no problems neither with transport, nor with food and etc. The real difficulties were in selection of children for surgery. Believe me, our cardiologist who examined children, recommended us every third kid for surgery and it was verydifficult to tell their parents why their child can't be operated at present time.
- How do you estimate training of our Kazakhstan cardio-surgeons and level of equipping of NSSC with the equipment required for carrying out of surgeries and nursing of patients in the post-surgery period?
- I can assure you, for last 2 years lots of changes had happened in equipping of heart surgery department, that is thanks to the charity funds. It became possible to get the latest devices for carrying out of ultrasonic diagnostics of children. Resuscitation beds for children with small weight have been purchased. The surgical tool-kit has been modified and supply with medicines has improved. As for training of Kazakhstan doctors, they deserve the most positive compliments because many changes have happened after the training of doctors from NSSC on the basis of our clinic in 2009. Apart that, short introductory visits have been arranged for A.O.Sejdalin, the head of the heart surgical department and K.N.Kuatbekov who is in charge for treatment of children with congenital heart diseases. Of course, all these visits abroad and exterior training of Kazakhstan doctors positively affects on their work in Almaty. And also our correspondence and an exchange of experience constantly proceed.
- What is necessary to make your stay in NSSC, surgeries and lectures of the team of Italian doctors were the most effective?
- Undoubtedly we aspire to organize and prepare our visits in such manner that they were effective and were as much as possible useful to our Kazakhstan colleagues. For this purpose it is necessary for us to prepare our future visits together. It is required to us of more interaction in selection of patients, in a choice of the pathology which is most interesting to its more detailed studying. And the most important thing is to form a uniform team from the ambitious, trained and decent experts for overall aim achievement – the highly skilled help to children with congenital heart diseases.
- What future plans do you have in Italian-Kazakhstan medical cooperation?
- Our as you called Italian-Kazakhstan cooperation in the field of children's heart surgery is planned for 3 years towards, during this period we plan to visit NSSC 5-6 times.
Thanks for conversation. During celebrating of Day of Medics we would like to wish all doctors success in your hard but very important and humane work.
Dinara Muratova
