Closed Mitral Commissurotomy During Pregnancy in East Africa

Cardiac surgeons traveling to East Africa on humanitarian surgical missions treat a large number of people of all ages with rheumatic heart disease. A patient with severe mitral stenosis with pulmonary edema in the second trimester of pregnancy was treated successfully with closed mitral commissurotomy in a hospital in rural Kenya. An operation from the late 1940s may regain prominence more than 70 years later in areas of the world with a high incidence of rheumatic heart disease and limited cardiology and cardiac surgery resources.