UBTH May Begin Open-heart Surgery Soon – CMD

Chief Medical Director (CMD), University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH), Prof Michael Ibadin, has pledged the hospital’s readiness to began open-heart surgery, saying it was determined to alleviate the plights of cardiac disease patients seeking treatment overseas.

Ibadin stated that the hospital has sponsored and trained cardio-thoracic consultants who were experts in heart diseases surgery, adding that current efforts at seeking treatment overseas for heart diseases was unnecessary, adding that the hospital’s medical expertise was committed to providing ‘routine and safe surgery’ for patients, including indigent cardiac patients.

Consultant Cardio-thoracic and Vascular Surgeon, Department of Surgery at the hospital, Dr Stanley Okugbo, leading the heart diseases team, said the hospital has successfully performed surgeries of the lungs and heart, wondering why patients are increasingly drifting to India and other foreign countries for surgeries, that are routinely and safely offered at the hospital.

Okugbo, who noted that UBTH was in the process of acquiring all modern equipment required for open-heart surgeries, listed some of the breakthrough carried out by the team at the tertiary hospital to include, patent ductus arteriosus (popularly called hole-in-heart) ligation, shunts for cyanotic congenital heart disease, pericardiostomy and pericardiectomy, among others.