Lagoon Hospital Lagos Performs First Open Heart Surgery

Lagoon Hospital, in the Apapa area of Lagos state has successfully performed an open-heart surgery on a 59-year-old man, making it the first private hospital in the country to achieve such feat.
The three-hour operation was performed on Friday, July 25, at the ultra-modern operating theatre suites of the hospital by a team of home-based Ni­gerian health practitioners.

The Cardiac Surgery Group was led by Dr. Bode Falase, visiting consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at Lagoon Hospital and Dr. Onyekwelu Nzewi, a consultant cardiac surgeon at Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast, United Kingdom (UK).
They were supported by cardiac anaesthetists, perfusionists, physiologists and operating theatre nurses.
The 59-year-old man successfully had a quadruple vessel coronary artery bypass surgery.
Speaking on the achievement, the leader of the group, Falase, thanked Lagoon Hospital for the opportunity to start the open-heart programme.
"The surgery and the care the patient received were therefore the same as would obtain in any other top health care facility abroad, making Lagoon Hospital a viable alternative to travelling abroad for the same surgery," he said.
The Chief Executive Officer of the hospital, Major Ganesh Kale (retd), said: “As a private hospital in Nigeria, we are committed to providing excel­lent care for our patients and will continue to ensure that complex operations like open heart surgery, major joint replacements and minimal access surgery are available in the country, so Nigerians do not need to travel abroad for these procedures.”
Open heart surgery is any surgery where the chest is opened and surgery is done on the heart muscle, valves, arteries, or other parts of the heart (such as the aorta). The term "open" means that the chest is "cut" open.
The first open heart surgery in a teaching hospital in Nigeria was successfully carried out at the University College Hospital, UCH, Ibadan, Oyo State in October 2013.