By Fisayo Akinduro,  Osogbo

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Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospitals Complex (OAUTHC), Ile-Ife, has successfully performed surgery on a 14-year-old boy (names withheld) with rare heart failure.
The Chief Medical Director of the hospital, Prof Adebayo Adetiloye, disclosed this during a chat with newsmen in Ile-Ife.
According to him, OAUTHC is the first hospital in West Africa Sub-region that successfully performed such rare heart surgery.
Adetiloye said the operation was spectacular because of the method the surgeons used which is quite different from the method obtainable abroad.
Explaining the method that was carried out, the CMD said: “generally, if an open heart surgery is done, the cardiologist stops the heart and diverts the blood into the machine before operation could be carried out on the heart, and that has been the way they do it abroad.
Also speaking, the heart surgeon with OAUTHC, Dr Uvie Onakpoya, who led the team of surgeons that operated on the young patient, said the boy was referred from Wesley Guild Hospital, Ilesa to the teaching hospital, Ile-Ife, for further diagnosis.
According to him, the boy’s heart wasn’t working effectively well before he was reported to paediatrics cardiologists to see why the heart didn’t work well.
Onakpoya added that the aneurysm of the boy was now bigger than the side of normal left arterium in the child.
According to him, the bigger size of the aneurysm made it compressing on the left lower chambers of that heart and causing him the heart failure.
The cardiologist stated that the heart was not able to pump out long again, because this balloon out section of the left atrium was now compressing on the pumping chamber of the heart, which led to his diagnosis.
He commended the hospital staff that rally round, a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) as well as others that supported him financially within the hospital.
The Cardiologist expressed further that CT Scan which cost N70,000 further confirmed that his aneurysm has been very big in which something urgent must be done before bursting.
He said, “The worst of aneurysm is very thin compared to the normal left arterium, which can burst at anytime, for if it bursts and ruptures, the end is instant death.”
He attributed people’s collapsing, slumping and having untimely death to aneurysm bursting.
Additionally, Dr Anthony Adenekan, the Former Head of the Anesthetic department of the hospital, confirmed the higher level of risk for the surgery of such ailment.
Adenekan said such rare heart problem’s operation was the first of its kind and very threatening for people suffering for it, for if care is not taken, it easily kills.
In the same vein, another Paediatrics Cardiologists, Dr Bamgboye Taiwo, said that it was a great and first surgery of such ailment that they performed in the institution.
According to her, the cardiologists were happy for the outcome of the surgery for the boy is stable, and it is believed he would continue doing fine.
In the same vein, the mother of the boy, Mrs Florence Oluwatayo, appreciated all the staff of OAUTHC especially the cardiologists for the success of the surgery and for the donation at large.
Oluwatayo said the boy was hale and hearty from birth, but just last year, the boy started complaining of stomach ache, but she thought is a minor case.