CHI making remarkable progress since establishment- resident cardiologist

By Kristen Macklingam

Since its establishment in 2005, the Caribbean Heart Institute (CHI) located at the Georgetown Public Hospital has been making remarkable progress. This is according to home-grown resident cardiologist, Dr Mahendra Carpen, who has a two-fold portfolio as director of the heart institute and cardiologist consultant at the hospital. During an interview with TVG’s Current Issues and Analysis (CIA) programme on Tuesday, Dr Carpen stated that while the CHI has achieved much success to date, many Guyanese are unaware of what services the institute offers.
“One major challenge is that patients or the population at large are not aware of what we do and what is available. We have everything available to patients from consultation all the way to heart surgery. These include office visits, in-patient management, patients who are sick enough to be admitted to the Intensive Care Unit… ; we have stress testing, basic ECG, eco-cardiograms, and cater for patients who need angiograms,” Dr Carpen said.
He explained that for patients who need heart surgery, there are visiting teams which come to Guyana once a month to perform major surgeries such as open-heart and by-pass surgeries. The local cardiologist noted that since its inception, the CHI has provided tremendous opportunities for Guyanese to receive advanced cardiac care locally, thus ensuring that the array of services available in the Caribbean is provided at the hospital.“One of the things that have impressed me so far is the number of patients who have need for cardiac care and who come to the CHI.
Otherwise if there was no CHI, these patients would have no place where there is specialist cardiac care available. In previous years, some of these patients may have had to go elsewhere, outside of the country; however that could have only been done by a select few of patients and not a majority of patients.”
Dr Carpen said that while he has only taken over the reins at the CHI for a month, many patients have visited the institute and received treatment for various ailments. He noted that the CHI is a private entity within the public hospital setting and he will continue to work with his staff to ensure that the facility is available to all patients.
It was also explained that the success rate for surgeries being conducted at the CHI has been “remarkably good” since its establishment.