The first open heart surgery was performed at St. George Regional Hospital in December, 2023. Since then, St. George Hospital has performed over 250 procedures a year
St. George, UT (PRUnderground) March 7th, 2024
On Dec. 2, 2003 the first open heart surgery was performed at Intermountain St. George Regional Hospital at the hands of Dr. Roger Millar. It’s a day Dr. Kory Woodbury remembers clearly.
“I was the assist on those first two cases that day,” Dr. Woodbury said. “It’s hard to believe it’s been 20 years since we started offering this surgical procedure here.”
As a cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Woodbury has been part of the open-heart surgical program at St. George Regional Hospital since the beginning. In the last 20 years, the size of the program has remained steady, operating on approximately 250 to 300 patients each year, but the complexity of the patients has increased substantially.
“The patient base is an aging population, so we see patients who are older, with more co-morbid conditions, but we’ve been able to keep our outcomes largely similar with our award-winning program over the years,” Dr. Woodbury said.
Dr. Woodbury credits much of the success of the program to the full-team approach offered at St. George Regional Hospital.
“The thing about heart surgery, it’s not a bunch of individuals, it’s a symphony,” Dr. Woodbury said. “Everybody has a part to play and if somebody doesn’t play their notes right, the piece doesn’t come out right.”
From the front-line providers to the nurses, physical therapists, cardiac rehab team, respiratory therapists, operating room staff and more, along with the team of cardiothoracic surgeons that now includes Dr. Jason Bowles and Dr. Alec Eror and Dr. Woodbury, there are a lot of moving pieces to ensure each patient receives the best possible care. Seeing all of those pieces come together is one of the things Dr. Woodbury loves about his job.
“It’s a highly collaborative endeavor, and that’s good for the patients,” Dr. Woodbury said. “For the patient, it’s almost like getting a second and third opinion because all of the surgeons are constantly talking to each other about things. I feel fortunate to have two great partners!”
Despite practicing cardiothoracic surgery for more than 20 years, Dr. Woodbury said every morning before an operation, it’s a little bit like being back in high school the morning before a big game.
“You wake up with those butterflies wondering what challenges you might be faced with,” he said. “Every time you stop the heart you get that flutter in your own heart, and then when you take the cross clamp off and the heart starts beating again, you get that dopamine dump and think, ‘OK, we’re all right.’”
It’s a feeling, and an appreciation for the work he is able to do, that Dr. Woodbury never takes for granted.
“The first time I don’t feel that when I do heart surgery is the last time I should do a heart surgery,” he said. “The stakes are high. Anything you do a lot can become routine, but there’s nothing routine about this.”
He offers that bit of advice to anyone who has come to consider open heart surgery as commonplace in our society.
“It’s important for patients and their families to understand this is a big surgery with a big recovery,” Dr. Woodbury said. “Sometimes people assume that because this surgery is performed a lot that it is easy, but it is emphatically not. Human biology is still human biology, and these physiological upsets are not to be taken lightly.”
For Dr. Woodbury, sitting down with patients and walking them through the process of the operation and the first few weeks of recovery is intensely gratifying, and is yet another element he doesn’t want to take for granted.
“Once I stop finding that part rewarding, I’ll stop doing surgery,” he said. “It’s so important to remember why I came into this field and what it is we are doing to save and improve lives every day.”
About Intermountain Health
Headquartered in Utah with locations in seven states and additional operations across the western U.S., Intermountain Health is a nonprofit system of 33 hospitals, 385 clinics, medical groups with some 3,900 employed physicians and advanced care providers, a health plans division called Select Health with more than one million members, and other health services. Helping people live the healthiest lives possible, Intermountain is committed to improving community health and is widely recognized as a leader in transforming healthcare by using evidence-based best practices to consistently deliver high-quality outcomes at sustainable costs. For more information or updates, see https://intermountainhealthcare.org/news.