RHV, Nisa Premier Make History With West Africa’s First Tele-Robotic Surgery
Pecohub A new chapter opened in Nigeria’s healthcare system at the weekend as surgeons at Redeemer’s Health Village (RHV) Hospital, Lagos, in collaboration with Nisa Premier Hospital, Abuja, successfully performed what they described as the first tele-robotic surgery in West Africa.
The landmark procedure saw a surgeon in Lagos remotely operate on a patient undergoing surgery at Nisa Premier Hospital in Abuja, demonstrating for the first time the possibility of delivering complex surgical care across hundreds of kilometres without the operating surgeon being physically present at the patient’s location.
The procedure, witnessed by selected journalists at RHV in Lagos, involved a patient with a kidney tumour in Abuja. Using robotic surgical technology and a high-speed internet connection, the surgical team in Lagos controlled the robotic system at the Abuja hospital to perform the operation.
Robotic Surgeon from RoboMed Global Inc., a US-based company and a Professor of Urology and Transplantation, Obi Davies-Ekwenna, described the development as a significant demonstration of what technology could bring to healthcare delivery in Nigeria.
“The second procedure we did was a tele-surgery procedure where we were able to operate on a patient in Abuja, 500 kilometres away. We were able to operate on a patient with a kidney tumour, a cancer tumour. And so that was successful.”
The tele-robotic operation followed another robotic procedure performed on a 28-year-old woman who had lived with a congenital obstruction affecting the drainage of her kidney.
Speaking with journalists shortly after the surgeries, the Chief Executive Officer of RHV Hospital, Dr Adedamola Dada, said the patient’s condition had placed her kidney at risk of permanent damage.
According to him, the robotic procedure was used to remove the obstruction and reconstruct the affected area to restore the normal flow of urine.
“For those of us who were in the theatre, it was pretty obvious immediately that the obstruction was removed. The urine started flowing very freely,” Dada said.
He said the procedure itself lasted about one-and-a-half hours, excluding preparations for the robotic system, and resulted in minimal blood loss.
“For me, the most important thing is the quality of the work that has been done. The surgery is a lot more precise, the bleeding is almost no bleeding, and the patient can go home early.”
Dada said the significance of the development went beyond the two patients, arguing that remote robotic surgery could expand access to highly specialised medical care in Nigeria.
He said the technology could eventually allow specialists in other parts of Nigeria, or even abroad, to perform complex procedures on patients without requiring them to travel.
“What this simply means is that for very complicated cases where we don’t even have the manpower in-country, surgeons can stay in the US and operate on that patient here,” he said.
