The Lagos University Teaching Hospital in Idi-Araba successfully carried out the first thoracoscopy surgery on a 13-day-old infant.
The minimal access surgery was performed in order to unblock the food particles in Dorcas Shola’s tubes, a 13-day-old child.This was LUTH’s first procedure ever carried out.
A thoracoscopy is a surgical or medical procedure performed by medical professionals to diagnose and treat disorders of the thymus gland, lungs, or oesophagus.
It is a surgical method that requires minimal invasiveness and is used to identify and treat chest issues.
The medical term for thoracoscopic primary repair of oesophageal atresia and tracheoesophageal fistula was described by Prof. Wasiu Adeyemo, the Chief Medical Director of LUTH, during a press conference on Tuesday.
Just 13 days after the baby’s birth, the patient’s life-threatening health condition was discovered, he said, and a small amount of surgery was done to remove the illness from the baby’s chest.
“What we mean by Minimal Access is that you have a disease you want to remove, but in order to get access to it, you have to open it up through a small hole, so you do not have to open the patient up all the way,” explained Adeyemo.
There will be very little or no opening, and there will not be as much pain.He said that the Federal Government’s equipment availability and the availability of surgical personnel were the main reasons for the surgery’s success.
“With the availability of cutting-edge technology, we purchased several of these towers for between N60 and N80 million, and we have a large number of them in the hospital. All of these towers were made possible by the funding that the Federal Government provided for us,” he continued.
Dr. Felix Alakaloko, the surgeon who operated on Shola, said that failure to provide adequate care for a child afflicted with the disease from birth would result in death.
He added that the children would always have trouble digesting their food.One symptom, he said, was when the baby started to spill breast milk out of their mouth or nostrils. The surgery was an enormous undertaking, according to Alakaloko.
The tube that carries food is in the chest, so operating on a newborn is extremely challenging because there is not much room in the chest.
When you have to cut a baby open, you put the patient in danger and make it harder to help them because they will experience a lot of trauma, the doctor explained.
“They try for us because this is the first of such surgery in the hospital, and I am thankful to God for the success,” the baby’s mother, Adeyinka Shola, stated.
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