St. Patrick Hospital of Missoula celebrates 30 years of heart research and repair

Thirty years of heart surgery and research in Missoula met Saturday morning when Billi Billington, a registered nurse at St. Patrick Hospital http://www.saintpatrick.org/ , stopped by to say hello to Dr. Thomas Joudinaud, a heart surgeon from Paris, during Heart Expo.

Billington was part of the team that performed the first open-heart surgery in Missoula in 1975.

"We did a couple of dogs," Billington remembered, "and then in December of 1975, we operated on our first human patient."

The coronary artery bypass was a success in more ways than one.

Thirty years later, the patient is still alive.

And that surgery launched St. Pat’s down a road that has turned Missoula into one of the world’s leaders in heart research.

Joudinaud is a good example of the latter. Halfway through a two-year research program at the International Heart Institute of Montana Foundation http://www.ihimontana.org , the surgeon could have gone anywhere in the world to research heart valve disease in a program offered by the French government.

He chose Missoula and the International Heart Institute.

By VINCE DEVLIN of the Missoulian

Full Story: http://missoulian.com/articles/2005/02/20/news/local/news04.txt