Beat goes on: new life for an aging cath lab

Boulder machine avoids junkyard to aid patients in desperate Ethiopia

Bill Scanlon, Rocky Mountain News

Published March 6, 2007 at midnight

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BOULDER - Serendipity saved an aging $1 million heart-catheter machine from the scrap heap, and now it will travel halfway around the world to save the lives of desperately ill, desperately poor Ethiopian children.

The cardiac-catheter lab will be a first for Ethiopia and the first one to be used especially for children in all of East Africa.

Yet it was just another piece of old technology for Boulder Community Hospital, which had already replaced it with an all-digital cath lab.

"This would have gone to the landfill," said Darryl J. Brown, director of cardiopulmonary neurodiagnostics at the hospital, on Thursday.

Once technology supersedes the old machines, few, if any, American hospitals are eager to take the older models.

So they're often sold for scrap.

But Brown recently attended a local Rotary Club meeting where a member mentioned he had contacts with Project Cure, the Centennial- based humanitarian-relief organization that collects donated medical supplies and delivers them to hospitals in the developing world.

A few telephone calls later, Project Cure President Douglas Jackson had found an ideal fit - the Black Lion Hospital in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, one of the poorest nations on Earth.

On Monday, technicians were dismantling the $1 million Siemens cardiac-catheter lab to prepare it for shipping to the Pediatric Cardiac Center at Black Lion Hospital, which was built by the Children's Heart Fund of Ethiopia.

Brown and BCH environmental coordinator Kai Abelkis knew that a lot of these giveaways don't work out. The industry is rife with stories about sophisticated American equipment gathering dust because the recipient didn't have the infrastructure to support it or the need was overstated or there were no doctors trained to take advantage of the windfall.

"But I got sold on Project Cure," said Abelkis, of the humanitarian organization that calls itself the largest distributor of donated medical supplies and equipment in the developing world. "They make assessments and make sure the place can handle the equipment."

In this case, the cath lab will go to a nation of 75 million people with an average per-capita income of $100 per year.

It's a place that has gone through political upheaval, cycles of drought and famine and a recent influx of refugees from Somalia and the Sudan.

"There are 6,000 kids who could use the surgery from this equipment, kids who were born with rheumatic heart disease or developed it," Jackson said.

Many of the children were born with rheumatic heart disease because their mothers, victims of famine, didn't eat well enough during pregnancy.

Many others developed it because there were no antibiotics to stop strep throat from damaging their heart valves.

"We expect, once we get the cath lab, we'll be able to treat three or four children a day," said Bruk Berhanu, a civil engineer from Addis Ababa. "Otherwise, these children would continue to be very sick. This will be the first of its kind. That's why we're so excited."

Berhanu was in Boulder on Monday to see the equipment and will make sure the building that houses the lab will have the necessary infrastructure.

Project Cure ships two or three semitrailer loads of medical equipment and supplies every week and has shipped to 105 countries, Jackson said.

When the cath lab ships, the load also will include sutures, catheters and the necessary drugs and needles.

"I don't want them to rely on us forever. But until things get turned around, we'll keep getting them the supplies they need," Jackson said.

Brown estimates that the seven-year-old cath lab will be good for another 15 years in Addis Ababa.

"There's nothing wrong with this technology - it's still adequate. It's just not the best," Brown said. "We live in a competitive medical environment and have to have the best."

Brown added: "It's amazing to realize that, here at Boulder Community, we have as many working cath labs as they have in East Africa. We feel honored to be able to support Ethiopian doctors and nurses in improving the lives of so many children."

Heart catheter lab headed for nation of 75 million people

• Manufacturer: Siemens, at a cost of $1 million when built seven years ago.

• Size: Weighing 2 tons, the lab fills up most of a living-room-size space, including cabinets storing data and X-ray technology.

• Procedure: A catheter, a thin flexible tube, goes into an artery in the arm or groin and is threaded into the heart. The catheter shoots a contrast solution, similar to a dye, into a vessel or artery. That lets the X-ray technology better see the contrast between healthy and diseased heart tissue.

• Equipment and function: A huge X-ray arm, shaped like a bighorn sheep's horn, scans the chest cavity, looking for disease - blocked, loose or leaking valves, damaged and leaking chambers. Other parts of the equipment measure pressure in the heart's chambers to further pinpoint the problem. X-rays - up to 60 images a second - are taken to view blood flow so obstructions and leaks can be detected.

• Treatment: After the X-rays are analyzed, doctors follow up with treatment options, such as surgery or installing the perfect-size stent to keep the vessels and chambers of the heart open.

scanlon@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-442-8729

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