Surgeons To Embark On Research To Improve Surgery Outcome

A professor of surgery at the University of Lagos (UNILAG), Adesoji Ademuyiwa, says surgeons are unravelling new surgical researches to improve patients’ outcome.

Ademuyiwa disclosed this to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on the sidelines of the Nigeria Institute of Health Research, Global Surgical Unit, (NIHR GSU) prioritisation meeting on Wednesday in Lagos.

The professor, who is also a Consultant Pediatric Surgeon at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), explained that the surgeons took time to look at Future research during the NHIR GSU prioritisation meeting.

NAN reports that the NIHR GSU meeting is an international event that provides a platform for leading experts, researchers and practitioners in global surgery to discuss and chart ways for improved surgical care.

It also reports that collaborators from University of Birmingham and Edinburgh with surgeons from eight countries were in attendance while Ademuyiwa was the leader of the Nigerian hub.

According to Ademuyiwa, through the collaboration, they have been able to provide data and information not available anywhere in the world.

“WHO guidelines on surgical site infections first published in 2016 and revised in 2019 does not have any evidence as to the role of change of gloves and change of instrument.

“But our collaboration using over 13,000 patients recruited from seven countries are able to show conclusively that change of gloves and instrument at closure of wounds can actually reduce wound infection rate,” he said.

Ademuyiwa said that the collaboration was able to show that use of cheaper alternative does not worsen surgical outcomes when compared with more expensive alternative.

Also, a professor of Colorectal Surgery at the University of Birmingham, Dion Morton, said the meeting intended to report on world-leading research led from Nigeria, changing practice and transforming the lives of surgical patients.

Morton said that the changing practice they had looked at include enormous projects on reducing surgical site infection and reducing infection in wounds after surgery.

He said every operation created a wound that could get infected, and infections of those wounds were very expensive and unpleasant for patients.