Heart surgery

The Austrian-American film star and former California governor, 70, had a scheduled procedure to replace a valve at Cedars-Sinai hospital on Thursday.

The device was installed to repair a defective aortic valve in 1997. Thursday's operation lasted several hours, TMZ website reports.

Schwarzenegger is said to be recovering well and reportedly commented after waking from surgery: "I'm back."

His spokesman, Daniel Ketchell, said that Schwarzenegger was "in good spirits".

The patients, all adults, include five females and four males from all over Papua New Guinea.

The patients traveled from as far as Wewak, Goroka, Mt Hagen, Lae, Chimbu and Moresby.

The one week operation involved local staff assisted by 10 medical staff from the National Heart Centre Singapore.

The cost for the surgeries has been fully paid by the OOH through its fundraising events and the responsibility of provincial hospitals to send the patient and guardian to Moresby for the operation.

Unlike previous years, open heart surgery was carried out twice a year.

The new program will involve two separate teams from Australia and Singapore.

The Australia team will be operating on children while the team from Singapore will concentrate on adults.

The first operation under the new program took place this week involving  ten children.

The second operations will be carried out on adults in June by the Singapore team.

The heart surgery commenced on Sunday and ended on a high note today at the Port Moresby General Hospital carried out by the Open Heart International (OHI) Australia and local staff.

The 10 children came from Goroka, Mt Hagen, Alotau, Lae and Moresby.

Local cardiothoracic surgeon Dr Noah Tapaua was pleased with the outcome of the six days operation.

Dr Tapaua said the patients are recovering well and have responded well to the treatment following surgery.

He was grateful for the help of the Australia team as they really helped to train the local staff.