Operation Open Heart has been conducted by the Sydney Adventist Hospital for 22 years, since the first trip to Tonga in 1986. There have been 71 cardiac teams in total which have regularly visited 12 countries in the Pacific, Asia and Rwanda. The major recipients of this support have been Fiji (17 visits) and Papua New Guinea (16 visits). The teams have performed cardiac surgery on 1,635 children and adults, with a predominance of paediatric congenital surgery over adult valve surgery. The early mortality is low at 2%. The teams generally include a cardiologist, cardiac surgeon, anaesthetist, intensivist, perfusionist, physiotherapist, ICU and ward nursing staff, and a biomedical technician. The financial value of this contribution were these operations to have been done in Australia would be AUD $ 25 million.

All members of the teams are volunteers and contribute financially as well as medically, by paying for their own airfares. The teams attempt to bring all of their equipment and disposable items in order to minimize the impact on the recipient hospital. The program is supported by AusAid, by donations / discounts from surgical equipment companies, and by reduced air freight charges.

In addition to the service component, the capacity building in the recipient country is equally important. This may involve training nursing staff in the operating room, ICU or ward, by working with local cardiac surgeons and anaesthetists, training local surgeons to do simple procedures such as PDA ligation and shunts, teaching medical students, and by upgrading local infrastructure.