Guardian Angel

Renowned heart surgeon Alan Kerr saved Donna Lander’s life in 1987. This year – thanks to a Listener story – he saved her again.

- Donna Chisholm

July, 1987. David Lange’s Labour Government is on the cusp of its second term, the international stock market is three months away from the Black Tuesday collapse, and in Auckland’s Green Lane Hospital, 38-weeks pregnant Donna Lander is close to death.

She had been admitted to the heart unit with chest pain after an emergency flight from her New Plymouth home. A 6cm aneurysm in her aorta was rupturing and only urgent surgery could save her life, but it was fraught with risk, both for her and her unborn child. Do doctors deliver the baby first, or try to save Lander’s life and let the baby take its chances?

Usually during open-heart operations, the patient’s body temperature is cooled to reduce its demand for oxygen, but that carried an unacceptable risk to the baby. In a finely judged medical balancing act, the theatre team, led by cardiac surgeon Alan Kerr, decided to keep Lander warmer than usual during the five-hour operation – it would protect the baby but increase her risk of brain damage.

It was “touch and go”, he says – an obstetric team was on standby in case the baby needed to be urgently delivered by caesarean section. “It was a very major operation at the best of times, even in non-pregnant patients. We caught it just at the time of rupture.”