First successful open heart operation outside Korle-Bu

Health News Sunday, April 28, 2019

Source: citinewsroom.com

2019-04-28

An open-heart operation to replace a mitral valve damaged by an artificial valve in a sixty-one-year-old man was successfully performed for the first time outside the Korle-Bu University Hospital. (KBTH).

The mitral valve located on the left side of the heart was damaged and could no longer facilitate blood flow from the left atrium to the left ventricle and resulted in palpitations.

Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, Minister of the Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation and renowned cardiothoracic surgeon, led a medical team from Providence's specialized hospital to perform the 39th operation on the weekend in Accra.

The team included Dr. Baffoe Gyan, cardiac surgeon, Dr. Martin Tamatey, cardiac surgeon, Dr. Ernest Ofosu Appiah, anesthetist, Mr. Tito Nto, anesthesiologist, and Dr. Roger Godson, clinical perfusionist and four other nurses.

Frimpong-Boateng said the condition, if it was not corrected by the time the risk was low and beneficial to the patient, could have led to heart failure and that the surgery could no longer solve the problem.

While going through the procedure with journalists, he explained that the patient had been asleep; cleaned, drained, opened the chest and replaced the heart with the mitral valve and closed the wounds in the heart to make him badume his function.

"Let me add that at some point in the process, we had to transfer the function of the heart and lungs to a heart / lung machine … because we could not open the heart if it was possible. was working, "he explained.

"The body was cooled to about 28 degrees to be preserved, then the heart was cooled to about 10 degrees, so that it stopped working and emptied the blood that it contained to allow us to replace the valve ".

"After that, we warmed the heart and body to the original temperature and transferred its function to the machine."

The renowned cardiothoracic surgeon stated that the patient would be kept in the intensive care unit between 3 and 4 days and later in the recovery service.

He said the valve would last for the rest of the patient's life and would not make him susceptible to heart disease but rather improve the patient's life.

Such an operation would cost between $ 50,000 and $ 70,000 abroad, which he said was much less in Ghana.

He urged the public suffering from such a condition not to seek treatment abroad, as this could be done in Ghana at a lower price.

Providence Health Hospital, he said, would work with all the other specialty institutions across the country to help make cardiovascular surgery accessible to the public, but not to competition.

Professor Frimpong-Boateng commented on the prevalence rate of the disease in the country. He said that there were people with this disease but that there were few facilities and specialists.

"In a year, we're supposed to do about 12,000 heart-related surgeries, but I do not think we're doing up to 200 right now," he said.

For every two million people there should be a heart center to accommodate them.

Ideally, Ghana needs to have about 15 heart centers to serve the population.