First ‘Awake Surgery’ performed at King Faisal

KIGALI - King Faisal Hospital - Kigali (KFH-K) in collaboration with the Neurosurgery Department of Duke University, US, has concluded a one-week Neurosurgical Camp where 10 patients underwent surgery. Two of the patients were from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi. The operations were carried out on patients with brain tumours, spine tumours, spine fractures and chiari malformations. The surgeries also contained a training component, where 17 nurses from KFH and Kigali Teaching Hospital (CHUK) benefited. The partnership with the US-based varsity started last year and was first cemented with a donation of Neurosurgical equipment worth over Rwf 35 million. The equipment was handed over in October 2010. According to Dr. Emmanuel Nkusi, the coordinator of the Rwanda Neurosurgery Centre at KFH-K, the high-tech equipment was used to speed up the process of opening the skull, helped the hospital to better attend to patients and considerably reduced the number of patients referred to foreign hospitals. The camp brought together about 40 medical professionals from Duke University, KFH and CHUK. “The camp was organized with the aim of improving relationship between the two centres providing neurosurgical services, enhancing our medical teams’ skills as well as offering more opportunities to patients requiring special procedures and treatments,” Nkusi said. The Awake Brain Surgery, is a special surgery performed when the patient is awake to treat some brain (neurological) conditions, including brain tumours or epileptic seizures with lower risk of damage to functional areas of the brain. Ends

National

First ‘Awake Surgery’ performed at King Faisal