I will be providing cardiac anesthesia to facilitate open heart surgeries for patients in Nigeria who don’t have the resources to pay for it or to travel to other countries in order to get heart surgery. I will also be teaching local providers (physicians, nurses, lab techs, perfusionists) how to provide comprehensive care for patients undergoing cardiac surgery. I will also be teaching Transesophageal and Transthoracic Echocardiography.
Nigerians in need of cardiac surgery (unrepaired congenital disease, rheumatic valvular disease mainly) who cannot afford to pay for surgery or travel to another country to afford surgery. This population has been historically underserved as the entirety of West Africa has been. Nigeria in particular has had even less outreach when compared to other west African countries secondary to its political fluctuations since the 1980’s.
We are working on training and educating people in all aspects of cardiovascular surgical care. Immediately we see the impact of teaching diagnosis and medical management of cardiac disease. We also teach appropriate pre-op work, intra-op management and post-op care from ICU through outpatient follow up! We will have a fully functioning cardiac surgery program in Nigeria sometime in the hopefully near future!
In two weeks we were able to provide life saving cardiac surgery to 25 patients ranging from 14 to 60 years old. The impact on the patients, their family and friends is immeasurable!
