Nizamiye opens resident open-heart surgery unit

It is uncertain how many hospitals have a permanent heart surgery unit. The running practice is to stage a few days of open-heart surgeries using imported surgical teams. The surgeons fly out once the surgeries are done. Nizamiye Hospital in Abuja is hoping to change that. This month, a five-man surgical team from Turkey joined […]

It is uncertain how many hospitals have a permanent heart surgery unit. The running practice is to stage a few days of open-heart surgeries using imported surgical teams. The surgeons fly out once the surgeries are done.
Nizamiye Hospital in Abuja is hoping to change that. This month, a five-man surgical team from Turkey joined hospital staff roll as personnel for its cardiovascular surgery department, established last year.
It includes a lead cardiovascular surgeon, a perfussionist to man the heart-lung-machine used in open-heart bypass surgeries, a cardiovascular anaesthesist, a technician and an intensive-care-unit nurse.
The team is credited with more than 15,000 open-heart surgeries at one of the largest private hospitals in Turkey, with a 99 percent success rate.
Cardiovascular surgeon Dr. Mustafa Kirman, with 25 years of heart surgeries under his belt, leads the team.
“There are a lot of cardiac diseases that lead to surgery. I hope in a month, 20 or 30 surgeries can be performed,” he said.
 “After 15,000 surgeries, for us it is a simple procedure but a real big surgery. It is border-line between life and death. The risk is high for some people, especially when the condition is discovered late. Early diagnosis and early surgery raises the chances of success. Late surgery, late diagnosis increases risk of mortality,” Kirman said.
The team was able to accumulate a record 15,000 surgeries because demand for cardiovascular intervention soared with government-backed insurance and welfare to pay for it.
Private hospitals which led the pack in cardiovascular interventions fell over themselves to do the most numbers.
But withdrawal of insurance covers and government welfare which paid for the surgeries left many unable to pay for their own surgeries out of pocket. The waiting list for heart surgeries thinned out, and some units closed down, one source explained.
Now, formerly busy foreign surgical teams are going where the need and the ability to pay is.
The team estimates the load of cardiac surgeries in Nigeria is sufficient to keep it busy for a long time – starting with immediate demand in the Abuja area.
The plan is to offer not only maintenance heart procedures but full interventions that require going into the heart itself to repair or replace valves and remove blockages.
Most procedures in open-heart bypass surgeries require surgeons to “bypass” the heart – stop it from pumping and divert blood flow into a machine that takes up the pumping function while a system replacing the lungs puts in oxygen and removes carbon dioxide. It is a heart-lung machine.
“Surgery is not the end of the procedure. The patient and doctor communication continue all of life. Periodic control is necessary for the patient,” said Kirman.
Nizamiye as yet has no plans for subsidised surgeries, and is leaving that decision to the future.
“We just want to start operations,” said Fetullah Celik, the hospital’s director of protocol.
“In Nigeria, the teams come from abroad, perform the operations and leave the country. This team will be permanent here. Let’s first see the scope of work and perform the operations, then after that we will be able to respond to that question,” Celik said.