Hospital & Health Care - Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Operation Airway aims to make life-changing airway reconstructive surgery available to all children who cannot breathe or speak on their own.We are a group of physicians and volunteers from Mass. General and Mass. Eye and Ear who carry out surgical procedures in the US and abroad to restore and rebuild children's airways. We perform surgery on children who have tracheotomies due to vocal cord paralysis, subglottic stenosis, tracheal stenosis, as well as a host of congenital and acquired problems, aiming to free them of tracheotomy tubes and enable them to breathe, speak, and swallow on their own. Our team consists of pediatric otolaryngologists, anesthesiologists, pediatric intensive care unit doctors, and pediatric nurses. Our Mission Leaders are Dr. Christopher Hartnick of Mass. Eye and Ear and Dr. Phoebe Yager of Mass General.Our primary goal is to educate local healthcare teams so that they can develop their own sustainable programs to care for children at a local level. We hope that our mission trips will represent partnerships between the in-country medical community and Operation Airway to provide high-quality treatment to children even while the Operation Airway team is not physically there.Our secondary goal is to work together on research to improve the way children are cared for.