Janet Cathey, an OB/GYN, trained at UAMS, did her residency there and recently taught there. She had back surgery there two years ago. But it was her experience as a 7-year-old in need of heart surgery that has her so distressed about UAMS’ suspension of its heart surgery program.
Cathey was born with a hole in her heart. Her parents, who were living in Missouri at the time, were told kids like her lived to be teenagers and then died. It was the middle of the 1950s, and “nobody operated on hearts then,” she said. Open heart surgery — in which the chest is cracked open — was being done, but it was rare.
Then her father learned that one of the places you could get open heart surgery was Arkansas, where Dr. Masauki Hara was putting what was then called UAMC on the map. Hara
Hara repaired Cathey’s heart in 1964.
“Here it was 1964 and I had heart surgery there,” Cathey said. “To see their program was ending was kind of stunning for me.” As a tertiary care hospital, UAMS should be teaching and offering procedures that are done nowhere else in Arkansas, like its high-risk pregnancy program, she said. “To me it’s like saying, OK, we don’t have brain surgeons here. … I’m really worried
However, Leslie Taylor, a spokeswoman for UAMS, said the program’s suspension will be short-lived and could be back in business in a couple of weeks. She also said that UAMS is sending its residents who wish to learn cardiothoracic surgery to train at the Arkansas Heart Hospital and Baptist Health.
“UAMS is a huge asset to the state,” Cathey
Hara, who came to UAMS from Stanford, was suffering from nasopharyngeal cancer when he operated on Cathey. He died four years later, in 1968. It was because of Hara’s illness that Hara protege James Suen decided to go into head and neck cancer, a field in which he is known worldwide. Suen cofounded the Arkansas Cancer Research Center.
Cathey was on