… ‘We have upgraded to treat Ebola’
Lagoon Hospital in Apapa, Lagos State has become the first private hospital in the country to perform an open-heart surgery successfully. The surgery was performed by a team of home-based Nigerian health practitioners.
Besides, the hospital management also disclosed that its staff had been trained to handle any incident of Ebola virus, saying a good number of its clients were expatriates, adding that the hospital had upgraded its facilities to handle various cases.
The heart surgery was performed on a 59-year-old man, who had a quadruple vessel coronary artery bypass surgery, The surgery was performed on Friday, July 25, this year.
The three-hour operation was performed at the ultra-modern operating theatre suites of the hospital by the cardiac surgery group, led by Dr. Bode Falase, visiting consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at Lagoon Hospital and Dr. Onyekwelu Nzewi, a consultant cardiac surgeon at Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, United Kingdom (UK). They were supported by cardiac anaesthetists, perfusionists, physiologists and operating theatre nurses.
A World Health Organisation (WHO) report said there were increasing incidents artery disease in Nigeria. The coronary arteries supply blood to the heart. Partial blockage to these vessels result in chest pain (angina) and complete blockage may lead to heart attack. Treatment could either be by unblocking of the arteries, using cardiac catheterisation and stent insertion or in advanced cases, coronary artery bypass surgery.
Speaking on achievement, the Chief Executive Officer of the hospital, Major Ganesh Kale (retd), said: “As a private hospital in Nigeria, we are committed to providing excellent care for our patients and will continue to ensure that complex operations like open heart surgery, major joint replacements and minimal access surgery are available in the country, so that Nigerians do not need to travel abroad for these procedures.”
Also commenting on the successful commencement of open-heart surgery, the Group Clinical Adviser and Chief of Surgery, Dr. Jimi Coker, stated: “Most of the open-heart surgeries performed previously were done as part of cardiac missions with the whole team of health professionals flown in from abroad to do this. At Lagoon Hospital, we performed this with a team of resident medical personnel except for one of the cardiac surgeons. This will ensure that the programme is sustainable.”
The leader of the group, Falase, thanked Lagoon Hospital for the opportunity to start the open-heart programme. He emphasised that open-heart surgery required a combination of both skilled professionals as well as the right support and enabling environment, which he said Lagoon Hospital provided.
“The surgery and the care the patient received were therefore the same as would obtain in any other top healthcare facility abroad, making Lagoon Hospital a viable alternative to travelling abroad for the same surgery,” he said.
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