The Chief Medical Director of the hospital, Prof. Akin Osibogun, said LUTH doctors, in collaboration with foreign surgeons, successfully operated upon three Nigerians aged between 18 months and 23 years.
Osibogun said the 18-month-old baby girl was suffering from atrioventricular canal defect —a combination of several abnormalities in the heart that is usually present at birth.
According to the Chairman of LUTH Cardiac Project, Prof. Janet Ajuluchukwu, the defect occurs if there is a hole between the chambers of the heart and the valves that regulate blood flow in the heart.
“Atrioventricular canal defect allows extra blood to circulate to the lungs. Ensuing problems overwork the heart and cause it to enlarge,” Ajuluchukwu said.
The 23-year-old, an undergraduate, was diagnosed with ventricular septal defect, another heart defect that leads to the creation of one or more holes in the wall that separates the right and left ventricles of the heart; while the last patient, a seven-year-old, had Tetralogy of Fallot — a birth defect that affects normal blood flow through the heart.
Osibogun said by the feat, LUTH had joined the league of Nigerian hospitals with the capacity to perform open-heart surgery.
He said the ultimate goal was to reduce medical tourism to overseas hospitals and to give Nigerians value for their money.
“We at LUTH carried out these surgical procedures in collaboration with our foreign partners, whom we invited from Switzerland, Greece, Turkey and India.
“The idea behind the assemblage of this international team is for skills transfer, so that after some time, our home-based physicians can also perform these surgeries.
“When that happens, it will reduce the cost of getting such procedures done, and also build Nigerians’ confidence in local physicians,” Osibogun explained.
On why foreign surgeons had to lead the LUTH team, the CMD said that new programmes required collaboration with experienced professionals in order to ensure patient safety and stable recuperation after the procedures.
He advised Nigerians to always present any unusual health symptoms to the physicians early enough in order to prevent complications and make treatment effective.
He assured Nigerians that LUTH had requisite work force, as well as infrastructure to carry out complicated medical procedures, such as open-heart surgery, and organ transplantation.
He also noted that the hospital had performed successful renal transplantation, thus repositioning it for better health care delivery.
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