Hospital for Special Surgery helps Haiti victims

A team of anesthesiologists, nurses and orthopedic trauma surgeons from Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan headed for Haiti on Friday and have been performing surgery and tending to those impacted by the earthquake ever since.

Led by David L. Helfet, M.D., and Dean G. Lorich, M.D., and including physicians from NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, the team has been working round the clock at Hopital de la Communaute Haitienne in Port-au-Prince suburb of Petion-Ville and have already performed more than 50 surgical procedures. With air transport provided by global medical device company Synthes and surgical supplies donated by Synthes, Hospital for Special Surgery and NewYork-Presbyterian, the team is working under extremely rudimentary conditions with limited security.

The medical team currently in Haiti will be relieved tomorrow evening when a new team from Hospital for Special Surgery will take their place. "This is an important humanitarian effort that requires our team to perform hands-on medicine on people who have been suffering since the earthquake last week," said Dr. Helfet. "We had to quickly adjust from the high tech Hospital for Special Surgery environment with the most state-of-the-art radiologic and surgical equipment, to a makeshift hospital where we are trying to save lives and limbs."

According to Louis Shapiro, president and CEO of Hospital for Special Surgery, "It's in times like these that we need to act with skill and compassion. We are extremely proud of our team and the contributions they are making to help the people of Haiti. We will continue to contribute to these efforts as best we can in the coming days and weeks."