$2.5-million fund honours retiring cardiac surgeon

A $2.5-million endowment fund has been created and named after Dr. Arvind Koshal, who is retiring after realizing his dream of getting a worldclass heart institute to Edmonton.

The new fund will go toward recruitment, research into innovative heart techniques, education for cardiac surgeons, nurses and allied health staff, and gaining international recognition for the Mazankowski Alberta Heart Institute.

“It’s not my legacy, but it’s the combined legacy of the people of Edmonton,” Koshal said Tuesday, when the University Hospital Foundation named the endowment fund and the heart institute’s foyer after the cardiac surgeon.

Koshal arrived in Edmonton in 1991, when there was only one transplant surgeon to serve the city’s sickest patients needing new hearts. Many were sent to the United States for complex, expensive care.

Koshal began to imagine a heart centre in the heart of Alberta, and despite some design and construction problems that delayed the opening for about a year, the Mazankowski Alberta Heart Institute opened July 16, 2009, above budget at $217 million.

“It always takes a connector and (Koshal) connected the need with the vision with the community and government,” said Dr. David Johnstone, clinical department head for the Edmonton zone of Alberta Health Services.

There were glitches. The hybrid operating room needed extra cash and won’t be open until this fall, allowing surgeons, radiologists and cardiologists to all work on one patient at the same time, performing diagnostic tests, open-heart surgery or catheter procedures. The top three floors of the building remain empty, although Koshal explains the lack of office space for doctors shows how the institute focuses on the patient.

“We do everything here from neonates to people in their 90s,” Koshal said.

A four-month-old baby once got a new heart after being placed on a heart-transplant list before being born. A 79-year-old man also received a new heart there.

“We have excellence in cardiac care right now,” Koshal said. “What we need now is … the international community to understand what goes on here and how you do that is by having visiting professors come here … then have people from here publish and present at international forums.”

International renown is necessary to retain cardiac superstars in Edmonton and to boost care, Koshal said. Last year, Edmonton had the best wait times for many cardiac procedures. This year, that is no longer the case.

While wait times for urgent cases are about 2.4 weeks, people awaiting scheduled heart surgeries wait 25.6 weeks, or more than six months.

“I thought we had achieved our objective and that’s like winning the Stanley Cup … but if you don’t keep working at it, you won’t win every year,” Koshal said.

“This year the wait times have gone up. We’re victims of our own success, because we get complex cases from all over because our results are so good.”

All pediatric heart surgery in Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and most of eastern British Columbia comes to the Edmonton centre. Last week, the provincial government gave $55 million to upgrade the Stollery Children’s Hospital, including three intensive-care wards that will be moved to the sixth floor of the Mazankowski heart institute.

In total, 3,200 in-patients stay at the Maz each year, and the building sees 70,000 outpatient visits.

“This is where the best cardiac care is available to everybody, irrespective of ability to pay,” said Koshal.