Doctor in New York saves boy in Ghana
Published: January 19, 2006
A 16-year-old boy from a village in northern Ghana was rescued from a potentially devastating kidney disorder Wednesday through a surgical procedure performed by a nimble-fingered robot in Manhattan.
The mechanized surgery is just one of the surprising differences for Omoro Addy, whose trip across time zones and cultures has introduced him to the Statue of Liberty, cell phones and American cuisine. His trip also introduced him to robotic surgery, and for three hours Wednesday his fate was in tiny stainless steel hands.
“I can say that I am very, very happy,” Addy commented before his surgery. “This is unbelievable.”
More unbelievable, said Dr. Michael Palese, Addy’s doctor who guided the robot, was the health care nightmare the boy left behind.
Ghana, a country of 20 million, has only seven urologists, the specialists who treat kidney conditions. None had been trained to perform the kind of surgery Addy needed. The teen had a congenital defect in which a wad of errant blood vessels had engulfed his left kidney.
The three urological surgeons in Ghana who could have performed the operation died together in a rural car crash six months ago. Addy’s kidney disorder had begun causing backaches whenever he drank water; he was often absent from school.
“It’s called pelviureteric junction obstruction,” said Palese, a urologist at The Mount Sinai Medical Center, who performed Addy’s surgery without charge. “The vessels literally choke the kidney.”
The surgery alone would have cost $40,000.
Left untreated, the vessels would continue to grow, distorting the organ and diminishing its function. Ultimately, the disorder would damage both kidneys because urine would continue to back up and pool, enhancing the likelihood of infection.
“This is the kind of thing that can become life-threatening in a place like Ghana,” Palese said. “Getting an infection there would be horrible.”
With the aid of the three-armed robot — two that act as the surgeon’s arms and hands and one that is a camera — Palese was able to eliminate the vessels. The four incisions near the navel were no larger than the diameter of a pencil. The minimally invasive procedure is less disabling on the patient.
“It was technically more difficult than I initially suspected. He had more crossing vessels than what we saw on the CT scans,” Palese said. “But we were able to remove the defect and reconstruct the kidney.”
Addy may be discharged as early as tomorrow. He is not eager to return to Samsam Odumase, his pineapple-growing village. “I love it here,” Addy said. “I want to stay.” Addy is a member of an extended family, but he does not live with his parents.
The teen’s medical condition was discovered by Monica Westin, founder of World of Hope International, a philanthropic organization that focuses on the health care needs of people in sub-Saharan Africa. Westin, a longtime Long Island resident who lived in Manhasset and Port Washington, moved to Manhattan last year.
She had worked as a registered nurse in her native Sweden, but put her professional life on hold after marrying and raising her children. Her husband, who had been an anesthesiologist at North Shore University Hospital, died in 1991. Now that her children have grown up and moved away, she has devoted her life to the health care needs of people in Africa.
“I’ve been very busy, and I love it,” Westin said. “This is like a third career.”
If you enjoyed this good news Subscribe to Good News Blog
Share this
To share this simply copy and paste one of the below URL's: