N.B. Heart Centre's Dr. Marc Pelletier takes post at Harvard
The New Brunswick Heart Centre is losing its chief of cardiovascular surgery.
Dr. Marc Pelletier has accepted a position at Harvard Medical School, beginning next month.
"It was a hard decision, but I thought at the end it was a good challenge and a fun place to live, and I thought I would take that on," Pelletier said Friday in an interview with Information Morning Saint John.
Pelletier will lead a specialized cardiac surgery program at Brigham and Women's Hospital, one of the main teaching hospitals affiliated with Harvard Medical School.
Among other things, Pelletier will help guide cardiac fellows and residents through their operations.
"I'll be helping them throughout their surgeries as they finish the last parts of their training before they become full-fledged surgeons," he said.
He will also act as the surgical lead for the TAVI program, a fairly new and minimally invasive procedure that replaces valves through a small incision in the groin.
"I looked at it as a really good challenge. A chance to work at a place that's got a great reputation … and maybe forge some links with New Brunswick," said Pelletier.
"I'd love to get some of our [Dalhousie] medical students to come down and do some rotations there … a lot of things we do here, they do there but in greater volume, perhaps on a bigger scale."
New chief will face challenges
The Heart Centre at the Saint John Regional Hospital spent the past few months searching for Pelletier's replacement.
It received 29 applications from as far away as Italy, but hasn't yet named its new cardiac surgeon.
The new chief will face some difficult challenges, Pelletier admits. New Brunswick has the longest wait list for heart surgery anywhere in Canada.
"We have an aging population and we haven't been given more resources in 20 years to do the work we need to do," Pelletier said.
"That'll be the biggest challenge the new person will have to deal with."
Patients coming to the New Brunswick Heart Centre face surgical wait times of up to six months.
"But if you live in Edmundston you go to Quebec and have your surgery done in two weeks. To me that's not tenable," he said.
"We're exporting millions of dollars a year to Quebec, and that money is not coming back to pay healthcare workers in New Brunswick, so there are a lot of things we need to do better."
Pelletier grew up in Edmundston. He trained at Stanford University and returned to New Brunswick to head up cardiac surgery in 2007.
