The Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) two weeks ago conducted its first Aortic Abdominal Aneurysm (AAA) repair surgery.
The operation was carried out on an 80-year-old woman, who was diagnosed with an Infra-renal Aortic Aneurysm. The team conducting the procedure was led by General and Vascular Surgeon Dr. Carlos Martin, who recently completed a clinical fellowship in Vascular Sur-gery at McMaster University in Canada. The procedure was conducted on August 27th at the GPHC.
Speaking at a news conference at the GPHC, Dr Martin said most patients with aneurysms, which are abnormal swellings of an artery, don’t usually know when they have one as they are usually incidental findings as was the case of the patient. The patient was experiencing abdominal pain for about a year and a CT scan was done and the aortic aneurysm (the swelling of the main artery which carries blood from the heart to other parts of the body) was discovered. Dr. Martin told the news conference that the key to managing an aneurysm would be proactive care as if those aneurysms ruptured there is a 90% to 95% chance of death.
It was noted that prior to the recent operation, patients with the condition were either sent home or offered comfort care measures from GPHC while those who could have afforded it went elsewhere for surgery. “The only treatment is surgical whether open or endovascular (inside the blood vessel) at this point and I say at this point because in the future we hope to do this surgery endovascular,” he said. The advantage with the endovascular operation is that no incisions are made to the patient’s abdomen and patients would be able to go home the same day following the operation.
However, he boasted that his patient had the open surgery and did well and was able to go home just four days post-operation. Dr. Martin said that usually patients tend to go home in a week or two following the procedure.
“Why is it important that we are celebrating this achievement is that these patients are nearly doomed to death and you can see the rupture rate, our patient’s aneurysm size was 6.5 centimeters,” Dr. Martin explained while adding that the patient had a 20% chance of the aneurysm rupturing. One critical thing he noted that led to the faster discovery of the aneurysm was the fact that the patient was symptomatic with abdominal pain for a year.
The aneurysm was infra-renal, he noted, and with the open method which was used, they were able to open the sack and cover the aneurysm with a graft. “We used a Dacron graft and hopefully sometime in the future we’ll exclude the aneurysm,” Dr. Martin related. He noted that sometime later they are hoping to place a stem graft on the inside of the aneurysm. He explained that the aneurysm is there but with the grafting they were able to exclude it from circulation.
“This is a massive leap in the care offered at GPHC, not only from a surgical point of view but all the logistics that go along with undertaking a big procedure like this,” he explained.
Additionally, he mentioned that there was great assistance provided to the team by the Cardiology Department that cleared the patient for surgery.
Dr. Martin also express-ed thanks to the patient, who volunteered to be the first person to have the operation done in Guyana. He added that the key to the success of the surgery was teamwork as he thank-ed Dr. Arturo Marrero, Dr. Kishore Persaud and other staff who were involved with the care of the patient.
Meanwhile, the Chief Executive Officer of the GPHC, Retired Brigadier George Lewis stated that the management of GPHC attributes the success of the procedure to the hospital’s continued commitment to training and education of the staff through local and international partnerships. Lewis publicly thanked Dr. Martin and the team.
He further noted that the GPHC is a very busy hospital but its operations have been affected due to focusing resources towards combatting the COVID-19 pandemic. On that note, he mentioned that in 2019 the hospital conducted 7,619 surgeries while for 2020 to date the hospital has done 1,344 surgeries.
The GPHC’s Director of Medical and Professional Services Dr Fawcett Jeffrey stated that the hospital has come a long way since the 1980s. “Since the 80s I’ve been at the Georgetown Hospital to present day, where we have advanced in the clinical and surgical management of patients to the point that we are capable now of fixing a vascular aneurysm,” Dr. Jeffrey noted.
He went on to say that he has also seen a number of advancements in other areas as the GPHC is now offering a number of procedures that were not offered some years back.
“The Georgetown Public Hospital has really made an advance, a massive leap in medical care in its evolution and I’m really proud to be standing here and be a part of this today,” Dr. Jeffrey added.
