Akron Children’s cardiovascular surgeon, Tara Karamlou, MD, MSc, embarked on a life-changing medical mission to Nigeria this past fall. Driven by a calling to bring her expertise to communities with limited access to specialized heart care, Dr. Karamlou and Akron Children’s perfusionist, Lindsey Stuhm, took their talents over 5,600 flight miles away.
Dr. Tara Karamlou holds one of her patients during the medical mission to Nigeria.
What started as a journey of compassion became special moments filled with connection and the profound privilege of diagnosing, educating and treating patients whose cardiac needs often go unmet. Dr. Karamlou shares her experience below.
Q. What inspired you to join a medical mission?
A. Through academic projects I had grown my awareness of the major gap in care for low- and middle-income countries. Nigeria has no pediatric cardiac surgery available except during medical missions. With a population over 237 million, it seemed unfathomable and heartbreaking to me that children would die unless they had the support provided during a medical mission.
Q. Describe your medical mission. Where did you serve, and how long did your time there last?
A. Through the VOOM Foundation, which is the humanitarian organization that organizes and deploys medical mission teams globally, a group of 27 traveled to Oraifite, located in the Nigerian state of Anambra. Together for 8 days, the team served at the Dame Irene Okwuosa Hospital.
Dr. Tara Karamlou and perfusionist Lindsey Stuhm along with the medical mission cardiac surgery team.
Q. Are you able to specifically describe the medical services you provided there?
A. We provided cardiac surgery care for children. Most patients had tetralogy of Fallot, a congenital heart condition with four abnormalities occurring together; ventricular septal defect (VSD); and simple valvar heart disease.
I personally operated on 9 patients, and my co-surgeon operated also on 9 patients. We had 2 operating rooms and a multinational surgical team. All the patients I aided were extubated before I left Nigeria, which was a great result on these complex babies.
The hours were very long. I operated from 6:30 a.m. to near 10 p.m. some of the days. The challenges of running an entire operating room team in this environment required a great deal of confidence, resilience and leadership.
Lindsey Stuhm, our cardiac perfusionist here at ACH, who also joined this mission, was part of my dedicated OR team, and a cadre of national and international nurses and cardiac intensivists served in a dedicated cardiac intensive care unit (CICU) that only opens specifically for mission trips. This unit remained staffed by nurses and CICU attendings from around the country for the week following the departure of the OR team.
Q. What was the most challenging part of this experience?
A. The limited resources created daily challenges. The team did a fantastic job being innovative each day.
One evening, blood supply ran out. Every cardiac intensive care unit staff donated blood in the middle of the night, so that the operating cases could be performed the next day.
There was limited ECHO (echocardiogram) support for cases. During one specific case, the oxygenator on the CPB circuit stopped working. This had to be troubleshot urgently.
There were limitations involving blood banks and bed availability. For example, a 9-bed unit needed to admit 4 cardiac surgical cases each day. During nonmedical mission times, there would be no cardiac admittances. Even with these limitations, the team remained resourceful and problem solved as each day began.
Q. What was the most rewarding part of this experience?
A. Leading a very high functioning team from all over the world was truly inspiring. The physicians and nurses that I met during this trip will be colleagues for life.
Dr. Karamlou is looking forward to ongoing medical mission work in 2026. Together with VOOM, she will serve as a grant-funded surgeon and will return to Nigeria next October.
