Francine Leca, France’s first female heart surgeon, died at the age of 86

She became the first woman to become a heart surgeon in France. Francine Leca died at the age of 86, Mécenat Chirurgie Cardiaque announced on Saturday June 15. A pioneer in pediatric cardiac surgery, she founded this association in 1996, after receiving a desperate letter from an Iranian father who was unable to have his child’s heart operated on in his country. “A child’s heart is a work of art that must be repaired”she liked to declare, according to the Mécenat Chirurgie Cardiaque website. “If we chose to operate on the children in France or Switzerland, it is to ensure them the impeccable quality of care that we would all want for our own children.”

Francine Leca became the first female heart surgeon in France in 1971, after attending her first heart operation at the Laennec hospital in Paris. A “revelation” for the student at the time, who was heading towards hand surgery. She then decided to specialize in pediatric cardiac surgery – “a man’s world”remembers Pascale Grais-Lacour, who worked alongside him for 45 years.

Mécénat Chirurgie Cardiaque has operated on 5,000 children with heart defects in around sixty countries where there is a lack of means to access this expensive surgery. Francine Leca was “remained close to many of her former patients whom she had operated on as children. She said: ‘I’m not a can opener, I operate on my patients and I follow them'”remembers his former collaborator, paying tribute to “listening and tolerance” of this lady of the heart.