Historic heart operations at Waikato Hospital

Two patients having heart operations at Waikato Hospital, New Zealand, on Wednesday will be the first in the southern hemisphere to have aortic valve replacements done through a small incision in the chest on a beating heart. The procedures on an 86-year-old Otorohanga woman and a 77-year-old Thames man are combined ones with cardiac surgeons and cardiologists in the hospital cath lab. Leading the surgery are cardiothoracic surgeon Nand Kejriwal and cardiologist Sanjeevan Pasupati under the watchful eye of a Canadian cardiac surgeon