US doctor helps Guyana log first ever open-heart surgery

An American doctor has helped a team of local physicians perform the first open-heart surgery in Guyana's history, according to the impoverished country's top health official.

"This is a milestone for medicine in Guyana," Health Minister Leslie Ramsammy said late Saturday, shortly after the surgeons successfully completed the four-hour operation at a public hospital in the capital of Georgetown.

Dr. Gary Stephens, of the nonprofit Maimonides Medical Center in New York, trained about a dozen local doctors and nurses during a double bypass procedure on a 64-year-old Guyanese man.

Ramsammy said more open-heart surgeries were planned in coming days in the South American country, one of the least developed in the region.