Closed Mitral Commissurotomy During Pregnancy in East Africa
Annals of Thoracic Surgery, Volume 102, No. 5, Year 2016
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Cardiac surgeons traveling to East Africa on humanitarian surgical missions treat a large number of people of all ages with rheumatic heart disease. A patient with severe mitral stenosis with pulmonary edema in the second trimester of pregnancy was treated successfully with closed mitral commissurotomy in a hospital in rural Kenya. An operation from the late 1940s may regain prominence more than 70 years later in areas of the world with a high incidence of rheumatic heart disease and limited cardiology and cardiac surgery resources.