‘Life should be based on affairs of the heart’. Reflections on congenital heart disease care at Green Lane hospital

Abstract

The vast majority of New Zealanders who were diagnosed with significant congenital heart disease (CHD) from the 1950s found themselves sent to Green Lane Hospital for evaluation and potentially surgery. The Cardiothoracic centre at Green Lane in Auckland grew up adjacent to a large park around the base of Maungakiekie/One Tree Hill, one of Auckland's many volcanic maunga or cones. Since 1960, largely through immigration, New Zealand's population has doubled to a heady 5 million. The majority of our patients however are still those who were originally evaluated and operated here. We are fortunate to have access to their original documents, describing in detail symptoms and signs at presentation and thereafter how a diagnosis was determined, often with earlier ingenious techniques. The surgical reports detail the operative findings and techniques of repair and (hopefully) thereafter discharge letter and clinic reports describe gradual recovery and an unfolding life.Overall survival from earlier years has been excellent and as current clinicians we are aware each day of the legacy we have inherited from pioneering colleagues, patients and families. This paper reflects on the past of Green Lane Hospital and the experiences of staff and patients in those earlier days and how these influence our Service in the present. We recognise that understanding this history will better enable (and inspire) us to improve the care we deliver to new arrivals and to the cohorts surviving from earlier eras, many now well into middle age and beyond.