Francine Leca, the first female cardiac surgeon in France and a pioneer of pediatric cardiac surgery, died at the age of 86, AFP learned on Saturday, June 15, through the association she founded.
“A child’s heart was for her like a work of art that she wanted to restore,” Pascale Grais-Lacour, former director of the medical center of the Mécenat Chrirurgie Cardiaque association, responded to AFP.
Francine Leca became France’s first female cardiac surgeon in 1971, after attending her first heart operation at the Laennec hospital in Paris. A “revelation” for the then student, who was heading towards hand surgery.
He decided to specialize in pediatric cardiac surgery, “a man’s world,” recalls Pascale Grais-Lacour, who worked at his side for 45 years.
5,000 children operated on by their association
In 1996, Professor Leca founded the Mécénat cardiac surgery association, after receiving a desperate letter from an Iranian father who could not operate on his son’s heart in his country.
Since then, this association has operated on 5,000 children with heart defects in some sixty countries where there is a lack of means to access this expensive surgery.
Francine Leca “remained close to many of her former patients on whom she operated as a child. She said: ‘I’m not a can opener, I operate on my patients and follow them,'” her former colleague recalls, paying tribute. to “his listening to her and her tolerance.”
Source: BFM TV
