LUTH records feat in open-heart surgery, renal transplant

The Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) has achieved a medical feat as it successfully performed its first open-heart surgery (OHS) on three patients and one renal transplant who are all LUTH patients, Akin Osibogun, chief medical director (CMD) told BD SUNDAY.

The CMD, who noted that the feat was novel in the hospital’s history, pointed out that three open-heart surgeries were performed on an 18-month-old baby with congenital heart disease with multiple holes in the heart; a seven-year-old boy with total heart correction and a

23-year-old undergraduate with hole in the heart and tears in the heart valves.

Osibogun, who said the patients underwent the surgery last week and were in a stable condition to leave the hospital on Friday, expressed satisfaction that LUTH had joined the league of hospitals like University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH) in Enugu State and the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, Oyo State, that carry out open heart surgeries.

According to the CMD, “The Open Heart Surgery was done in collaboration with medical experts in LUTH and experts from Hopitaux Universitaires de Geneve, Switzerland, Frontier Lifeline Specialist Hospital, India and Merkezi hospital, Greece to achieve the feat. A visiting team of specialists from Mansura Hospital, Egypt carried out the renal transplant in collaboration with LUTH consultants. The aim of this is to transfer technology and medical expertise to LUTH specialists who have gone to these health institutions to improve capacity.”

“The transfer of technology would take a while before LUTH doctors will be left to perform the surgery alone. Some LUTH doctors were sent to Mansura Hospital, India for training on ways to improve on their expertise to deliver qualitative care. The team could only operate on the three patients based on their clinical diagnosis and echocardiogram reports.

The CMD revealed that the reason most Nigerians seek medicare outside the shores of the country was to access care for Open Heart Surgeries, renal transplants and joint and knee replacement surgeries, areas hospitals in the country are seeking to improve expertise in.

While the financial implication for open heart surgery is less than two million naira and less than three million naira for the renal transplant at LUTH, the CMD noted that it is cost effective rather than travelling out of Nigeria for medicare thereby incurring huge cost from air tickets, surgery, social care and other expenses to be spent for the patient and other family members accompanying the patient.

The kidney transplant carried out on a 15-year-old came down with nephritic syndrome. The patient had been on dialysis for over six years before the transplant was done with a relation of the patient donating one of her kidneys for the transplant.

The CMD added that the reason some organ transplants fail after a while was due to host-graft analysis which may not have properly match or the patient’s refusal to take drugs as advised by doctors.

Alexander Chiejina