Mary Washington Patient Gives Powerful Video Testimony

Usually when a hospital releases its annual report and has a community meeting to talk about it, hospital executives run off numbers and statistics that can overwhelm those in attendance.

took a different approach Monday night at the John F. Fick III Center in Fredericksburg where hospital executives gave five doctors some time to talk about their expertise and 2011 highlights. They also used video to provide a heartfelt testimony from a Mary Washington Hospital patient from Texas named Laura who had a life-changing surgery performed by Dr. Timothy Sherwood.

Sherwood, who is a thoracic surgeon and associate professor at John Hopkins School of Medicine, was actually performing surgery during the conference, said J. Thomas Ryan, the executive vice president and chief medical director for Mary Washington Healthcare.

Laura's trachea basically had collapsed, which wouldn't allow air to easily get to her lungs. She described it as having bronchitis every day. Only two surgeons could perform the surgery she needed and Dr. Sherwood is one of those doctors, which she found out by searching the Internet and finding a YouTube video about his expertise.

"The surgery that Dr. Sherwood has done on me has transformed my life," Laura said on the video. "And how can you ever thank a man for doing that?"

She said the doctor collapsed her right run and tightened the cartilage around her trachea so that it formed the proper "D" shape. Laura said when she woke up from surgery, she could feel the air moving into her lungs for the first time in five years when before she could hear the air trap.

"People take breathing for granted. I will never take it for granted again," she said.

The other doctors who spoke were:

• Lawrence Roberts, director of trauma for Mary Washington Hospital. Dr. Roberts said the Level II trauma center was established in fall of 2008 and recently became a verified trauma center by the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma. He said a doctor is in the trauma center around-the-clock to provide quick trauma care. Dr. Roberts said a Level II trauma center has all of the same capabilities as Level I trauma center, but it lacks research and residency. "In terms of quality of care, we are as good or equal to a Level I trauma center," he said.

• Fransisco Alavarez, medical director for the Children's National Medical Center at Mary Washington Hospital. Dr. Alavarez talked about how the hospital has ben providing pediatric services since 2009. Since adding this service, Alavarez said pediatric patients' average length of stay declined from 2.32 days in 2009 to 1.89 days in 2011. The rate of readmission to the hospital dropped 41 percent during the same period.

• Alex Na, medical director for cardiovascular surgery. Dr. Na said the hospital's cardio program started in the early 1990s and his job is to ensure the program is of highest quality. He said the program is better than the University of Virginia Health System's program and that staff there ask for his program's protocols. "They know we have better systems in place than they do," he said.

• G. Jeffrey Poffenbarger, director of radiosurgery. Dr. Poffenbarger talked about the history of cancer research and how in the 1990s, people didn't live more than a year with lung or brain cancer. He said in January, the Regional Cancer Center performed the first stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) on a brain tumor. He said SRS is a major advance in cancer treatment and the Regional Cancer Center is one of only a few worldwide that have this technology. "We're not a big city, but we have a state-of-the-art radiosurgical machine," he said.

• Dr. John Chinault, medical director and radiation oncology lead physician for the Regional Cancer Center. Dr. Chinault was a physicist before he had what he called a "mid-life crisis" and jumped ship to medicine. He said this year has been a hallmark year for him, with the introduction of the linear accelerator RapidArc at Stafford Hospital in conjunction with the University of Virginia Health System. The linear accelerator is one of about 10 in the country, and delivers powerful radiation very quickly, concentrating the dose on the tumor while minimizing exposure to other organs and tissues. He said this new system reduces treatment time by half. "A brain cancer patient can walk in and walk out the same day, in about an hour," he said.