Lagos, Ife teaching hospitals record surgical feats

The Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) has successfully carried out its first Bone Bridge surgery as well as Cochlear Implant surgery on three patients without inputs from expatriate medics, the state Commissioner for Health, Jide Idris, disclosed yesterday.

Also, its sister institution, the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital Complex (OAUTHC), Ile Ife, Osun State has announced a successful surgical operation on six children, aged one to five years, for open heart surgery.

According to Idris while briefing the media yesterday in Ikeja on developments within the health sector in the past 11 months, LASUTH also had its first successful kidney transplant carried out by a team of urologists and nephrologists last November with the patient discharged in good condition the next month, hinting that another such transplant was underway.

During the period under review, he said the teaching hospital in collaboration with Vision Care and the South tKorean Community in Nigeria provided free cataract surgeries for 120 residents and treated 250 outpatients between November 9 and 13 last year with a 100 per cent success rate.

Under the blindness prevention programme, a total of 7, 250 patients with varying ophthalmic conditions were screened at 29 different community screening venues out of which 4, 867 representing 67.1 per cent were given free glasses, the commissioner added.

OAUTHC’s Chief Medical Director (CMD), Professor Victor Adetiloye, at a press conference yesterday, said the feat was achieved through collaboration with foreign partners.

He hinted that the hospital set up a committee on open heart surgery headed by Professor Bode Balogun while a Consultant Cardiothoracic Surgeon, Professor Mapsood M. Elahi from CardiacEye International Foundation led a team of foreign experts for the project.

The CMD said the surgery, which is already listed, was debarred for logistic reason and would be conducted in July.At the planning stage, he explained that 10 paediatric cases were selected and a team of local experts conducted a thorough evaluation of the patients while a team of foreign experts also carried out a similar exercise before the surgery was undertaken.