Always attentive to evolutionary processes, the cardiologist is a kind of command post at the National Center for Minimal Access Surgery, based in Havana. All specialties rely on him to give the go-ahead in surgical events that, not because they are minimally invasive, can be associated with heart complications.
“Luckily I live near the hospital, even on vacation I had to come to attend an emergency,” says Dr. Rolando Sánchez Piñero with the responsibility and high sense of teamwork that characterize him, and that is very typical of this Cuban health institution with great international prestige.
I met him in the middle of the consultation one Friday morning. Several patients underwent tests, anxious for the results to go or not to the operating room. The hustle and bustle never diminished his calm and equanimity and, together with the assistant, he received everyone with the ethics of the first-degree specialist in Cardiology and Master in Medical Emergencies who knows and knows how to treat and explain to each person.
“After assessing casuistically, we classify them for anesthesia, according to the world standards of the Goldman method,” he details, emphasizing “the physical examination and electrocardiogram as the basic and, depending on the history or anomalies detected, we perform the echocardiogram or another diagnostic route. “
With a deep look of the one who speaks firmly, he showed me an interesting fact: in one year, in an average of more than 2040 cardiological patients in the CNCMA, only 0.04 percent died from this cause. He confesses that even he himself was perplexed. The statistics speak for themselves of how much effort and human work is put into each case, because, in addition to the technological means available, the protocol of the center requires at all times collegial decisions and in this the skill and expertise of the cardiologist are essential.
“That respect and trust go hand in hand with constant improvement, research to demonstrate how being more efficient than in medicine implies quality of life,” explains who is also a second-level echocardiographer at the New York Hard Association. To achieve this, he delves into the largest surgeries, where the before and after are iconic in the evolution of those operated.
“Belonging to the Thoracic Group, for example, allows a thorough follow-up to each patient with lung tumors, whose surgeries are prone to cardiac complications, refers and then continues mentioning the frequent valvopathies in vascular ecstatic of the digestive system or in Hyperhidrosis, both procedures also frequent in the institution. In all these cases the pre-operative study is essential and then correct any detail along the way to prevent that is our essential function.”
“The echocardiogram is an effective way and if another study is needed outside the hospital, we also perform it to give a safe diagnosis. But surgical complexity often requires assisting in therapies or in rooms, making decisions, making procedures where the presence of the cardiologist is decisive. And that’s when they locate me. I always have to be reachable,” he says, very convinced of that role.
Not by chance Dr. Rolando came to this specialty: “Since I studied at the “Lenin” I leaned towards the career of Medicine, then a professor that I remember with great pleasure motivated me to decide on Cardiology, which I can describe as something very important in my life, “emphasizes who takes his profession in the same place of the family, sport or good music are also his predilections.
Minimum Access has been almost a new specialty under his belt as a doctor, graduated in 1983. He started as a collaborator when the CNMA moved to this building where another health center where he provided cardiology services used to be located. He soon earned the position in that work team that, without a doubt, has marked his curriculum, although sometimes he has to leave the plate of food or a good baseball game, his main hobby, to help a patient and save his life. And like a paradox, he does it from the heart. “It’s my turn and I’m doing with my heart, isn’t that journalist?”
Source: Periódico Digital Centroamericano y del Caribe
