Dr. Bridget Pearce regularly participates in medical missions to Central and South America
Adventure, comradery and the opportunity to help underserved populations in other countries drives Dr. Bridget Pearce to participate in medical missions to Central and South America.
The pediatric anesthesiologist from Mott Children’s Hospital at the University of Michigan has taken part in five medical missions in the last five years — three to El Salvador with a team from Michigan Congenital Heart Center (MCHC) and two to Peru with pediatric surgeons.
In El Salvador, the medical missions focused on providing anesthesia care for children with congenital heart disease. MCHC joined forces with Gift of Life International and local Salvadoran Rotarians to provide care. Pearce participated in mission trips in 2017, 2019 and 2022 at Benjamin Bloom Children’s Hospital in San Salvador and was joined by a pediatric cardiac surgeon, cardiologists, a perfusionist, intensive care unit nurses and a respiratory therapist.
“We took care of very sick patients with unrepaired congenital heart disease at relatively advanced ages,” Pearce said. “The most challenging were the teenage patients experiencing severe cyanotic heart disease who would have been operated on in infancy in the United States. The work was hard and the hours long but every evening we enjoyed meals together and formed friendships with our Salvadoran comrades.”
The missions also allowed the team the opportunity to teach Salvadoran providers the protocols and procedures that Pearce and her colleagues use at their institution. The Salvadoran nascent program has grown over the years, and in 2019, Benjamin Bloom Hospital opened a pediatric cardiothoracic unit.
“My experience in the operating rooms in El Salvador was joyous and rewarding on many levels,” Pearce said. “We plan to continue our yearly missions to help them care for the more challenging patients.”
In Peru, Pearce joined a team to provide outpatient pediatric surgical care at a free-standing medical facility in Yantolo in the Amazon jungle. A retired physician and philanthropist built the facility and organizes the visits with the international medical teams of pediatric surgeons, anesthesiologists, scrub technicians and perioperative nurses.
“One of the most poignant scenes from our mission was leaving the facility after a long day in the operating room and seeing our last patient walking hand in hand with her mother, heading back home in the jungle three hours after having hernia surgery,” Pearce said. “It’s a quite different life for many of the Peruvians than for children in our country.”
The mission team must bring many of their own supplies or improvise with existing supplies from previous mission trips. At the Yantolo medical facility, the operating room is one large space that accommodates three anesthesia machines, and two operations are done simultaneously. The physician anesthesiologists must handle their own cases, and there is minimal technical support at the facility. Pearce said the medical missions to Central and South America were exciting and professionally challenging, and she strongly encourages her fellow anesthesiologists to take part if the opportunity presents itself.
comments