Africa-Press – Cape verde. The Baptista de Sousa Hospital (HBS), in São Vicente, intends to take advantage of the arrival of a neurosurgeon from Cuban medical cooperation to create a vertebro-medullary unit for the differentiated treatment of spinal pathologies.
This information was provided to Inforpress by the orthotraumatologist and coordinator of the HBS spine surgery project, Paulo Freire.
According to the same source, the HBS’s perspective is to make a “quality leap” in terms of service provision, therefore, within the orthopedics service they are planning the creation of a spinal-medullary unit that is specifically dedicated to the treatment of spinal pathologies.
“Until now the hospital did not have a neurosurgeon, but on the 26th one arrived and we are going to take advantage of him, so that within the orthopedics service we can create a spine surgery unit”, highlighted the doctor.
According to Paulo Freire, in this way the hospital will create the conditions to “be an alternative, instead of evacuating patients to Portugal”.
“In addition to treating patients from São Vicente, those from other islands can be evacuated to São Vicente to treat this pathology. But this is a very big responsibility, also due to the cost it entails for the hospital”, he added, reinforcing that due to the costs, HBS is looking at the details about the financing that is to cover all this logistics of bringing patients from other islands and the be operated in São Vicente.
According to the coordinator, the HBS aims to be a reference center for the treatment of spinal pathologies, in accordance with the proposal of the Ministry of Health, for central hospitals to identify areas of technical differentiation that respond to health problems that require a specific response in the country, oriented towards the national territory.
Therefore, he explained, the hospital has been absorbing expertise and training staff through technical partnerships developed since 2013 with the arrival of two neurosurgeons from Portugal, one of them being the Cape Verdean doctor resident in that country, Miguel Correia.
This partnership, he explained, involved other countries such as Belgium, which made it possible to carry out 205 spine surgeries at HBS since 2013.
“From 2013 to date, we have performed 205 spinal surgeries. And in terms of missions, with specialists coming, we have already performed 124 surgeries. So, this already gives us the weight to say that we have the capacity and that we are an alternative to evacuation to Portugal or to any other center”, argued the same source, highlighting that in the last mission alone, 13 surgeries were performed, some of which were complex, but that the Baptista de Sousa Hospital has been safe and developing more and more.
“In the last mission, which took place from 3 to 7 June with neurosurgeon Miguel Correia, 13 patients were operated on, one of whom had a head injury or chronic subdural hematoma, in a joint training action with surgeons to update surgical techniques”, he highlighted.
He also reported that a patient with a highly complex condition with a tumor in the dorsal spine was operated on and that this was the second patient of this type to be operated on at HBS this year.
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