The Lagos State University Teaching Hospital Did Nigeria’s First Coronary Artery Bypass Graft (CABG)

• The Lagos State University Teaching Hospital makes a significant medical stride with Nigeria’s first heart artery bypass surgery
  
  It was a most cheery piece of news filtering out of the new generation and inauspiciously located LASUTH . The barely 19-year-old teaching hospital of an equally upstart state university has stolen the thunder from older and much revered colleges of medicine when it accomplished Nigeria’s first coronary artery bypass graft (CABG). This surgery creates new routes around narrowed and blocked arteries in the heart to allow sufficient blood flow to deliver oxygen and nutrients to the heart muscle.
  
  
  LASUTH, an upgraded general hospital, hemmed in by a rowdy bus stop and an unkempt police college, is by no means one of the so-called centres of excellence in medical studies in Nigeria often set in a vast expanse of space with verdant greens and serene ambience. LASUTH has continued to prove that excellence is not something buried in long tradition nor has it anything to do with the size and heft of an institution, but more about culture and character of an organisation.
  One Mrs Cynthia Onwurah was reported to have developed coronary heart disease about four years ago. According to her, she had always been healthy until all of a sudden she could not do her routine chores anymore. She suffered relentless pain in her chest, a condition known as angina in medicine. This in itself is the result of blocked arteries in her heart.
  
  
  Doctors reported that artherosclerotic plaques had built up in the walls of the arteries that supply blood to her heart. In other words, there is a hardening of her arteries which has significantly narrowed one or more of her coronary (heart) arteries. The beleaguered couple, Mr. and Mrs. Onwurah traversed hospitals across the country looking for cure. It was however at a private hospital in Lagos that the patient got some succour. Through a non-surgical process her coronary arteries which had been narrowed or blocked were opened up to allow blood to flow uninhibited in her heart. This process turned out to be inadequate, thus the need for a surgery.
  The private hospital referred Mrs. Onwurah to LASUTH and on November 26, 2011, Dr Bode Falase, a cardiothoracic surgeon and Dr Michael Sanusi, a paediatric cardiac surgeon led 33 other health professionals in LASUTH to carry out the CABG surgery on the patient. The process which lasted about six hours was successful; her breathing tubes were removed within 24 hours while she took some time to recuperate in the hospital.
  
  
  According to Dr Falase, “the (CABG) surgery has been shown to improve long-term survival in patients with significant narrowing of multiple arteries, especially in those with decreased heart muscle pump function.” This process is particularly important as the condition is rampant with people suffering from diabetes. In recent times, diabetes has been one of the most prevalent ailments among Nigerians. 
  
  
  While the rich and affluent patients have easily shuttled off to India or America for this surgery which, by the way, has become common in these places, the poor have hitherto been left to their fate; in fact, for dead. This is why we commend the management of LASUTH for this path-breaking feat. Though an expensive process, doing it at home must have halved the cost of going to India or America. The surgery team at LASUTH has given hope, if not life to many Nigerians suffering from excruciating pain in the chest and its attendant heart failure and debilitating stroke. They have wrought a solution to what has become a common Nigerian medical predicament.
  
  
  It must be noted that LASUTH has in the last couple of years, overreached itself in a very positive way, showing in many ways that a government institution can really give service to the joy of the people. There have been reports of quality operational procedures and methodical processes which have engendered efficient service to the users of the facility. In fact there was the example of LASUTH serving as the ‘finishing school’ to the medical students of much older and bigger college of medicine on the other side of town. Such is the strength and acclaim LASUTH has garnered in its short history.
  
  We commend LASUTH to other government institutions; we commend its leadership and urge it to continue to build on its well-founded strengths. 
  
  From The Nation NewsPaper of 22nd February 2012