Cook Children's Partners with Covenant Children's to Keep Heart Surgery Patients Close to Home
Children in West Texas and Eastern New Mexico can now stay close to home while receiving highly specialized cardiothoracic surgery, thanks to a newly formed partnership between Cook Children’s Health Care System and Covenant Children’s.
Surgery teams from the two hospitals joined together in Lubbock on Monday to perform two cardiothoracic procedures on pediatric patients. The partnership is part of an initiative to make treatment more convenient for patients and families in Lubbock and surrounding areas.
“Cook Children’s and Covenant Children’s developed a partnership, which allowed Cook Children’s to come to Covenant and perform procedures on a recurring basis,” said David Gray, D.O., chief medical officer of Covenant Children’s.
Vincent Tam, M.D., medical director of cardiothoracic surgery at Cook Children’s, performed both surgeries at Covenant Children’s. He traveled to Lubbock this week, along with seven other members of the Cook Children’s team. With the help of the surgical team from Covenant Children’s, Dr. Tam repaired the hearts of two children, including that of four-year-old Adrian Rosalez. Adrian was born with a vascular ring, a malformation of the aortic arch in the main blood vessel leading from the heart that partly or completely encircle the trachea or esophagus. Thanks to the collaboration between Cook Children’s and Covenant Children’s, Adrian is now recovering at home in Lubbock.
“Heart surgery is not a simple thing, I can’t take my suitcase of instruments, come to West Texas and do surgery," Dr. Tam said at a press conference at Covenant Children’s on Tuesday. "Heart surgery requires a large team of people, it requires a significant collaborative effort.”
Without this partnership, Adrian and his family would have had to travel to Dallas/Fort Worth, or another major medical hub to receive his surgery.
Covenant Children’s and Cook Children’s formed the joint partnership between the two hospitals in 2018. The plan allows Cook Children’s surgery team to perform cardiothoracic procedures on pediatric patients at Covenant Children’s once every quarter.
