Dr. Michael Zammit conducts an angiogram at the Yakima Regional Medical and Cardiac Center Cath Lab in mid-January. He joined the Center staff Jan. 1. Richard Burger photo

By RICHARD BURGER

A nationally recognized vascular surgeon has joined the staff of Yakima Regional Medical and Cardiac Center. 

He is Dr. Michael Zammit, who studied and practiced with the Wapato-born surgeon who pioneered coronary bypass surgery.

Zammit joined the Yakima Regional staff Jan. 1, and his first day of surgery was Jan. 13.

Among the positions held by Zammit before coming to Regional, were director of the Vein Treatment Center of Stevens Memorial Hospital in Edmonds, director of the Non-Invasive Laboratory of Pacific Vascular, Inc. in Bothell, and director of the Clinical Vascular Fellowship at Hope Heart Institute in Seattle.

Zammit said he decided to come to Yakima Regional when a friend and colleague suggested that he would have the opportunity to be “a program builder” there.

He said in his position at Regional he will be “doing everything outside the heart.”

That will include developing patient risk profiles, providing diagnostic services, and providing surgical treatment with minimally-invasive procedures in Regional’s state-of-the-art catheterization lab. 

These procedures include the use of surgical balloons and stents to open partially-blocked blood vessels. Zammit will be able to increase the quality of life for Yakima-area patients who would have previously had to travel to Seattle to benefit from his expertise.   

Zammit will also provide support for Yakima Regional’s wound specialists who treat wounds caused by vascular conditions resulting from diseases such as diabetes.

Zammit studied and practiced extensively with Dr. Lester Sauvage, who was born and raised in Wapato, and who went on to found the Hope Heart Institute, which specializes in the treatment of heart disease with the use of coronary bypass surgery, which he began performing in 1968.  Zammit was a research and clinical fellow at Sauvage’s institute from 1982 to 1984, and was the director of the clinical vascular fellowship there from 1993 to 2000.

He said the most significant development in vascular surgery in the last decade is the move away from open surgery to minimally-invasive procedures, in which he specializes.

“There is much less down time and a quick recovery” with those procedures, Zammit said.

One of the patients Zammit treated during his first day of surgery at Yakima Regional was Jamie Rose, an Alaska longshoreman he had been treating while at the Hope Heart Institute. 

The procedure performed by Zammit focused on the arteries in Rose’s legs, and without it, he may have lost the ability to walk, effectively causing him to lose his ability to earn a living.

In an interesting twist, during his stay in Yakima prior to the surgery, Rose said he discovered that his mother had graduated from the St. Elizabeth Nursing School, and that she had met his father while she was a nurse at the hospital, which was then St. Elizabeth’s.

After his return to his home in Seward, Rose said in a telephone interview that he had returned to work and characterized his treatment at Regional as “a great experience.”

Rose said he had also been able to return to his exercise regimen of daily workouts and a mile walk.

“Dr. Zammit is the guy that kept my legs under me,” he said. 

“We’re very happy to welcome Dr. Zammit to the valley,” said Monte Bostwick, CEO, Yakima Regional. “His professionalism, experience and dedication to expanding the vascular services available to the residents of Central Washington make him a great asset to our valley, our patients and this hospital.” 

Zammit is a native of Malta, and took his medical degree at Royal University of Malta in 1975.  

He served an internship in Pennsylvania, and residencies at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit and Rush Medical Center in Chicago before accepting a research fellowship at the Hope Heart Institute.