Hospital Treats Eight Children Affected by State's Closure of Stony Brook Pediatric Heart Program

Eight Honduran children and their parents thanked physicians at Schneider Children's Hospital after undergoing successful treatment for a range of heart conditions, for which they could not get care in their home country. Joining the families at a news conference were (in the white coats) Fredrick Bierman, MD, chairman of pediatrics at Schneider Children's Hospital, and Philip Lanzkowsky, MD, the hospital's executive director, and representatives from the Rotary Club's Gift of Life program (Howard Essenfeld, standing left, and Robert Donno, standing right), which works with U.S. hospitals to provide medical care for children in foreign countries suffering from debilitating heart problems.

Schneider Children's Hospital announced today that doctors have successfully treated eight Honduran children with debilitating heart conditions who were brought to the United States by Suffolk County representatives of the Rotary Club's Gift of Life program.

At a news conference today with the Honduran children and their families, doctors at Schneider Children's Hospital's (SCH) Pediatric Heart Center said they performed open-heart surgery or catheterizations on all eight children brought to the hospital over the past month - and the prognosis for all of them appears promising, according to Fredrick Bierman, MD, SCH's chairman of pediatrics and chief of pediatric cardiology, and Vincent Parnell, MD, the hospital's surgeon-in-chief and chief of pediatric cardiothoracic surgery.

The children had been scheduled to receive treatment at Stony Brook University Hospital, through arrangements made by Gift of Life representatives of Rotary District 726 in Suffolk County. However, the state Department of Health issued an order in September to halt all pediatric heart surgeries and catheterizations at Stony Brook until further notice. "Given the urgency of the children's medical conditions, and the fact that they were unable to get the care they needed in their home country or at Stony Brook, there were growing concerns that the children's lives could be threatened by any delays in treatment," said Michael J. Dowling, president and chief executive officer of the North Shore-Long Island Jewish (LIJ) Health System, of which Schneider Children's Hospital is a member. "When we heard of the plight of these children, we considered it both a mandate and a privilege to assist in any way we could."

Mr. Dowling met with Gift of Life International Chairman Robert Donno to extend an offer of assistance, and Howard Essenfeld and Leonard Stevens of the Gift of Life's Suffolk County chapter made arrangements to bring the children to SCH. Attached is a listing of the Honduran children who came to SCH, their heart conditions and how they were treated.

Contacts:
Michelle Pinto
Terry Lynam
(516) 465-2649/2640