ST. FRANCIS BEGINS OPEN HEART SURGERY

CAPE GIRARDEAU - St. Francis Medical Center staff performed the hospital's first open-heart surgery Wednesday. A second procedure was scheduled for today.

St. Francis officials said the hospital's first open-heart surgery patient, identified only as a male, was doing well following the operation.

Medical center officials announced in December that the hospital would begin performing the surgery by April.

Both of Cape Girardeau's hospitals now offer the service.

The procedure is the first carried out at the hospital, but not by the team.

"This is an experienced team," said a St. Francis spokesperson, who declined to be identified. She said team members had carried out several open-heart procedures while training at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis.

They trained there under the cardiothoracic surgeon who performed Wednesday's operation, Dr. Louis Ostrow, and Baptist Memorial cardiothoracic surgeon Glenn Crosby. Ostrow is the medical director of the St. Francis program.

The team, including nurses and technicians, trained at Baptist Memorial around the middle of March, according to the spokesperson.

St. Francis President John Keusenkothen was out of town Wednesday and unavailable for comment, she said.

Maurice Sandfort, chairman of the board of directors at the medical center, said: "I'd love to speak on that issue, but you really need to speak to John Keusenkothen. I'm not there on an everyday basis, and John would be familiar with how the surgery went."

The St. Francis spokesperson said she didn't know how many more procedures the hospital expected to do in 1991.

"That remains to be seen," she said. "That's not anything we can speculate on right now."

Cape Girardeau's other hospital, Southeast Missouri Hospital, has performed open-heart surgery since October 1984. Southeast Hospital officials have criticized the duplication of services, arguing that there is not a large enough volume of such surgery cases to economically support two programs.

A Southeast spokesperson said the hospital has performed about 1,300 open-heart procedures over the past six years.