UITH performs first Open Heart surgery

Prof. Abdulwaheed Olatinwo, Chief Medical Director (CMD), University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital (UITH), has said that the hospital has successfully performed its first Open Heart Surgery on two young girls.

Olatinwo made this known when he briefed newsmen on the feat recorded by the hospital in Ilorin on Thursday.

He said the feat achieved 48 hours ago was carried out by a team of surgeons led by Dr Neville Solomon of Apollo Hospitals Chennai, India.

The CMD described Solomon as a world renowned cardiac surgeon who performs over 3, 000 heart surgeries free around the world in a year.

According to him, the Teaching Hospital has now joined the league of three or four other teaching hospital that can perform Open Heart Surgery in the country.

“The first session of Open Heart Surgery was held in collaboration with our partners from Apollo Hospitals Chennai, India.

“The strategic partnership is of two benefits: first is that it exposes our patients to the highest quality of surgical care comparable to that which is obtainable anywhere in the world,’’ Olatinwo said.

He said the collaboration with Apollo Hospital would also facilitate skills transfer to the Teaching Hospital’s cardiac care team so that they could carry out subsequent surgery.

The CMD declared that with this feat, the Teaching Hospital would not rest on its oars, adding that the goal was to make UITH a one-stop shop for all medical solutions.

“Our next phase of clinical service expansion which will take off within the next few weeks is the commencement of cosmetic surgery in our hospital,” he said.

Olatinwo said that each of the two heart surgeries cost N1. 8 million, the hospital paid 72 per cent while the patient paid the remaining 25 per cent.
He said that a lot of financial investment was required to sustain the new phase of Clinical care in the hospital.

“I want to use this opportunity to appeal to the Government at all levels, public-spirited individuals and corporate organisations to partner with the UITH to fully equip our cardiac centre to include Cardiac catheterisation lab.

“We have purchased a heart-lung machine which was used during the recent mission, equipping Cardiac centre is next on the list of things to do,” the CMD said.

Olatinwo said the Teaching Hospital established in 1980 had recorded three other medical feats.

He said the hospital recorded its first kidney transplant in 2012 to become one of the eight other hospitals rendering such advance service in the country.

“We also commenced the Assistant Reproductive Technology (ART) programme which has yielded five babies (through IVF and ICSI) with four ongoing pregnancies including a set of triplets,’’ he said.
Olatinwo said the hospital had established and strengthened the pain and Palliative care unit, which he said, was a composite aspect of quality tertiary care everywhere in the world.

The parent of the 15 years old girl, Mr Mohammed Jubirl and Alhaji Olarewaju Balogun, father of the seven years old patient, thanked the hospital management for the operation.