Today was the first day of surgery for the September mission trip to the Nigerian Christian Hospital. The hospital is exploding with patients. There are now 24 patients waiting for surgery. Today we took it "easy" so everyone could get in the swing of things and we only did five surgeries including a rectal prolapse, 2 goiters, a giant incisional hernia and an epididymal cyst. We saw dozens of patients between cases.
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| Rectal prolapse |
One interesting (but sisgusting) case was this poor man has had
rectal prolapse for years. This is not painful but it is impossible to stay clean. He has had to wear a diaper and has constant soiling. We were surprised to see him this trip as we already had operated on him for a completely different problem about one year ago. At that tme he came in with a strangulated femoral hernia. I noted then that he had rectal prolapse but we did not repair it as he was critically ill from the strangulated bowel. The plan was to attack the prolapse problem if he survived the hernia problem. Today. we performed a transabdominal rectopexy.
Addendum (10/4/11)-the patient went home with the prolapse corrected.
