Saint Luke's Newsroom

Wright Memorial Hospital and North Central Missouri College (NCMC) have entered into an agreement for the purpose of offering Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support (ACLS) and Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) certification courses to Wright Memorial Hospital nurses as well as NCMC nursing students and faculty. The courses will utilize the simulation lab and equipment located on the NCMC campus.

Paul Gagne was running out of options. By August 2010, the once-active construction contractor had become so weak, he couldn’t shuffle the 20-or-so paces from his recliner to the kitchen of his Grandview, Mo., home without stopping. He napped constantly.

Saint Luke’s Health System has selected a new leader. After a nationwide search, the organization named Melinda L. Estes, M.D., MBA, as its new president and CEO.

Six words changed Ben Meseke’s life.

She heard the crash and knew something was wrong. It was shortly after 1 a.m. when Karin Ybarra woke to find her husband lying on the bathroom floor. The torn shower curtain betrayed his failed struggle to pull himself up.

Saint Luke’s cardiac transplant program, the only one of its kind in the region, has joined an exclusive list as one of 27 hospitals nationwide to record 500 adult heart transplants. Michael Lynch, a 50-year-old father of four from Kansas City, Kan., received his new heart on June 15 at Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute.

Professional athletes and musicians have something in common: They both live to play. And something else: The wrong injury means they never will again. That's what happened—almost—to Linda Thomssen, a violinist with the Kansas City Symphony for 27 seasons. Not once, not twice, but three times.

I spent the first six weeks of my life at Saint Luke’s Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. I was born 10 weeks early and weighed 3 pounds. My dad could hold me in the palm of his hand.

I was born at 24 weeks on October 20, 1984, and weighed only 21.5 ounces. My mom said my eyes were still fused close. The doctors at Saint Luke’s Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit told her I had only a 50 percent chance of surviving. (My odds went down to 13 percent when I developed a heart problem three weeks later.) The doctors said if I survived, I would be blind, deaf, and severely retarded.