Aanke (38) performs about a hundred open heart operations a year. ‘If an operation does not go well, I lose sleep over it’

“I put my life in your hands,” Aanke Bijleveld (38) is regularly told. As a ‘cardiothoracic surgeon’ at the MCL, she performs operations that literally involve life or death. There is a real risk that someone will die during a complex procedure. “I will never again say: this will turn out well, but: I will do my best.”

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