This year, Laredo Medical Center celebrates 22 years of providing the only comprehensive Heart Program in Laredo.  A program that came about after years of planning by several individuals, a trust foundation and one very determined physician—Dr. Joaquin Gonzalez Cigarroa, Jr.

“I came to Laredo in 1952 to set up my practice,” said Dr. Cigarroa. “It was a time where Laredo only had 1 doctor for every 3000 residents whereas the state of Texas has an average of about 1 doctor per 500 people.”

Furthermore, 60 years later, Dr. Cigarroa recalls how deprived Laredo was of specialty physician care. He says when specialty services were needed, Laredoans were forced to travel out of town. 

“So we saw it as a situation where the community was suffering,” Cigarroa said. “Our parents, our brothers, our children did not have these specialty services available.”

Because of this, Dr. Cigarroa, an Internist with training in Cardiology, took care of just about everyone’s cardiac problems—a task so great because of Laredo’s culture and location. 

“You live in Laredo where there’s a lot of diabetes, a lot of high blood pressure, a lot of people being overweight, all of these contribute to an increase number of heart attacks.”

This led him to soon realize that with the growth of the border city, he would need to begin developing a comprehensive heart program.

“In 1978, we began talking about cardiac catheterization which needed to be done in order to determine whether cardio surgery could be done or not,” explained Dr. Cigarroa.

To first build a Cardiac Catheterization Lab, millions of dollars would be needed leading the group of visionaries, including Dr. Cigarroa, the Sisters of Mercy, Mercy Hospital Administrators and leaders at the University of Texas, to approach the Lamar Bruni Vergara Trust Foundation for funding. 

In 1990, the Foundation, and the Radcliffe Killam family, gave a sizeable donation to build Laredo’s first Catheterization Lab. This then opened the door to recruit Laredo’s first Interventional Cardiologist—Dr. Ricardo Cigarroa—and three years later in 1993, his younger brother, Dr. Carlos Cigarroa—both sons of Dr. Joaquin Cigarroa. Both men trained at Harvard Medical School and the University of Texas Health Science Center at Dallas. 

Dr. Cigarroa describes his sons as both having a passion for Cardiology.  

“They saw the importance of continuing their education, continuing to progress, therefore continuing to improve the care they could give their patients.”

Dr. Ricardo Cigarroa and Dr. Carlos Cigarroa proceeded in performing procedures never done in Laredo before, such as angioplasties and stents, and this set the framework to bring in a Cardiac Thoracic surgeon—in this case, two surgeons: Dr. Gilbert Schorlemmer in 1995 and Dr. Arthur Santos in 1996.

Open Heart procedures such as valve replacements and by-pass were now being performed in Laredo for the first time. No longer was it necessary to travel long distances to have open heart surgery—something critical when time is ticking.

“When you’re dealing with a heart attack, or a potential heart attack, care must be given in the first hour,” says Dr. Joaquin Cigarroa. “If not, you lose precious heart muscle and quality of life is compromised.”

With the comprehensive heart team now in place, Mercy Hospital launched a major educational campaign to teach the public what to look out for to help prevent death.
“And since then, we’ve saved thousands of lives through cardiac catheterizations and thousands of cardiac bypass operations,” said Dr. Cigarroa. “By providing these services in Laredo, many lives have been saved.”

Dr. Cigarroa says he expects the program to continue growing and saving lives.

“Progress is going to continue to occur and we’ll continue to try and achieve it as far as possible.”

Laredo Medical Center has performed more than 45,000 cardiac catheterizations since 1990 and more than 3,000 open heart surgeries since 1996. LMC was also the first area hospital with an accredited Chest Pain Center to diagnose and care for people with heart attack symptoms.

For more information, call LMC at 796-3223.