Hospital da Luz Coimbra performed, last December 12, its first cardiac surgery : an aortocoronary bypass – a surgical procedure that allows myocardial revascularization – on a 75-year-old patient, now in process of recovering. The surgery was ensured by the team of Gonçalo Freitas Coutinho , who coordinates the new service now available in this hospital unit. “We are launching the program of cardiac surgery at Hospital da Luz Coimbra. And we never imagined to have a patient already in 2020”, states Gonçalo Freitas Coutinho, highlighting that his team comprises professionals that intervene daily in this kind of procedures, therefore being “prepared to perform any kind of cardiac surgery”. In this inaugural intervention of the service, a new device of extracorporeal circulation was used, for the first time, in the Iberian Peninsula. The investment in cardiac surgery represents a milestone in the project developed by Hospital da Luz Coimbra towards an expansion in the offer of specialized and complex cardiovascular services . A contribution in that sense was the investment made in a Unit of Intensive Care (inaugurated in 2018, being the first in a private unit in the central region of the country), without which cardiac surgery would not be possible. “The existence of an intensive care unit ensures the necessary and indispensable follow-up, opening the door to more complex and delicate surgeries, always in all safety”, underlines Gonçalo Freitas Coutinho. Manuel Teixeira, the first patient now operated, was in intensive care and was discharged from hospital after five days. “Day after day, I feel better”, he claimed in the story published by Diário de Coimbra, expressing his wish to resume working. Nurse by profession, he reports that extreme fatigue was the first alert sign that something was not right, having then undertaken a series of exams, that indicated coronary disease. He was first submitted to catheterization, unsuccessfully, until he was referred to Gonçalo Coutinho, who proceeded with the bypass. In the photo above, Rafael Santos and Ana Rita Santos (nurses), Jorge Pimentel (director of the Intensive Care Unit), Manuel Teixeira, Gonçalo Coutinho and Sara Gamelas (anaesthesiologist).
