Local Cardiac surgeon Dr. Pascotto and his team have just completed another life saving mission in the Dominican Republic. This wasn't their first mission and it won't be their last.

The heart to heart mission trips to perform heart surgery in the Dominican Republic are saving lives. Cardiac Surgeon Robert Pascotto say that "If these valves are not replaced these patients, for the most part, regress into heart failure and die at a young age."

Dr. Pascotto's team of people who have joined him on these trips since they started in 2002 has been expanding. The team always consists of 14 individuals, but the faces and places they come from are changing. "What has happened with the whole program is that it has started to grow and we have doctors now from Oakridge Tennessee we've had profusionists who have come from as far as San Francisco California. I received a call from a surgeon in Wisconsin to help with the program."

John says that all of these team members give up the comforts of their own home to come here to save lives, perhaps they don't even realize they're putting their own lives on the line. When we asked our cab driver about crime he said it's not as bad as places like Venezuela where criminals typically will kidnap foreigners for money, but he did say that crime activity is definitely on the rise.

Dr. Pascotto's wife Joan says, "It was very, very scary. It was very scary. We didn't know, really what to expect."

But they did expect to save lives and they are accomplishing that on every trip. More than one hundred lives have been saved so far. Tomorrow we'll conclude our special edition of health matters from the Dominican Republic by taking a look at the plans for future lifesaving.

For more information on the heart to heart mission you can visit their website at www.heartmission.com. You can also visit our website at NBC-2.com to see any Health Matters segments on the Dominican that you may have missed during the week.