NewsWatch: 2009: Cardiac Kids II

[Narrator:] From the University of California at Davis, this is NewsWatch.

[Paul Pfotenhauer:] Congenital heart defects are among the top killers of babies in Russia. Treated early enough, they are almost 100 percent treatable. UC Davis Medical Center heart surgeon Nilas Young helped develop a program, 20 years ago, to train teams in Russia to diagnose and operate on children. His first impression of their hospital care was surprising.

[Dr. Nilas Young, UCDMC Heart Surgeon:] I think we all had the impression that the Russians were very advanced scientifically and so we anticipated seeing at least somewhat contemporary types of medical settings but in fact they appeared at least on the surface and than after further investigation to be decades behind where we were.

[Paul Pfotenhauer:] It turned out that Soviet physicians were completely isolated from Western medicine. They simple couldn't treat Russian children born with heart disease.

[Dr. Nilas Young;] We brought all of our equipment. We tried to do everything, soups to nuts, if you will that we did here so we disassembled heart lung machines, disassembled anesthesia machines, disassembled eco-cardiogram machines...these are big bulky pieces of equipment, crated them and shipped them with us and then reassembled them there.

[Paul Pfotenhauer:] Over two decades, more than 7,000 children have been saved as a result of this initial volunteer effort by a few Northern California doctors. Today, it includes physicians from across the United States who volunteer their time to serve in Russia as part of Heart-to-Heart foundation. Paul Pfotenhauer, reporting from the UC Davis Medical Center.

[Narrator:] For more information please log on to broadcast.ucdavis.edu.