Every patient who Operation International’s cardiosurgery team schedules to treat on their annual missions to Guyana is in dire need of their medical expertise. The regular valve replacement, tumor removal, and bypass surgeries performed on each trip renew not only a patient’s ability to resume daily life, but their long-term survival. 

But perhaps no case demonstrated the significance of Team Hearts’ life-changing presence more clearly than a case that wasn’t on the schedule at all. During their 2025 mission to Guyana, the team rushed to perform emergency surgery on a 44-year-old man who had been brought to the hospital with only weeks to live.

The man, transferred from the interior of the country to the Caribbean Heart Institute, had swollen legs, a continuous cough, and trouble breathing to the point where he could not lay flat or even walk across a room when he arrived at the hospital.

“From a medical point of view, he was in severe decompensated heart failure,” said team leader Dr. Sanju Balaram. “Surgery was the only possible solution. It was unlikely he would survive more than a few weeks in this state.”

Team Hearts evaluated the man and determined that the man’s lungs had filled with fluid and that he had developed a block in his heart rhythm system. Two echocardiograms revealed a ruptured aortic aneurysm just above his aortic valve, which was severely leaking. The severe heart failure had also caused two other valves, mitral and tricuspid, to start leaking.

The man told Team Hearts he curiously had not had any previous symptoms. He said only that recently he noticed he could not jump out of bed in the morning as briskly as he had done before.

The team gave the man cardiac medications as they considered whether they could help this “very unique and rarely encountered problem within this hospital mission setting.” Even with a busy schedule of 10 other complex cardiac surgeries on their plate that week, the decision was clear: surgery was needed to save this man’s life. 

On June 19, the team brought the 44-year-old man into the operating room. They repaired his ruptured sinus of Valsalva aneurysm, replaced his aortic valve, and placed a specialized temporary balloon pump in the man’s aorta to help the heart beat stronger. The complex surgery was not without its challenges–including a ventilator and many cardiac medications to aid recovery–but it was a success.

“Remarkably, over the next day or two, he showed great improvement,” Dr. Balaram said. “The breathing machine was removed and he was able to breathe on his own. The balloon pump was removed and his heart slowly recovered.”

As a final step, the team provided the man with a pacemaker given that the ruptured aneurysm had destroyed the electrical system of his heart.

Within days, he was walking again. The 44-year-old was safely discharged home after 14 days in the hospital. “The patient and his family were very grateful to the entire team for all of his care,” Dr. Balaram said. 

This astonishing emergency case is just one of the 11 patients Team Hearts treated during their third mission trip to Guyana. The team, which was launched in 2023, have saved nearly three dozen lives since beginning their annual trips with Operation International in partnership with the Caribbean Heart Institute.  

In 2025, the rest of the 11 cases included several coronary artery bypass grafting and mitral valve replacements, as well as two minimally invasive aortic valve replacements, a procedure that had only been done twice in Guyana’s history.

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