Last week, a video showing a team of healthcare professionals from Tristate Healthcare Systems, a private hospital in Lagos, performing Nigeria’s first minimally invasive heart surgery, went viral.
A minimally invasive heart surgery is a term for procedures performed through one or more small chest incisions. In contrast, open-heart surgeries use one long incision down the centre of the chest, while the heart of the patient is still beating.
The minimally invasive approach offers less scarring and pain and a faster recovery. One of the patients who benefitted from the services the team offered, was an 81-year-old woman who needed a valve replacement. The surgeons at the health service provider who carried out this feat were led by renowned cardiologist and professor of medicine, Professor Kamur Tayo Adeleke. It is not the first time that Adeleke would be leading a team of specialists to carry out an open-heart surgery. In 2013, while still living in the United States, he led his team from his practice in Delaware to perform the first successful open-heart surgery at the University College Hospital (UCH) in Ibadan, Oyo State. Before this recent feat, Nigerians could only get lifesaving minimally invasive heart surgeries in the West, India and South Africa. But since the coming of Tristate Health care, over 120 normal open-heart surgeries have been done successfully, nationwide. Indeed, when Nigeria puts its mind at something, it becomes do-able.
An alumnus of Islamic High School, Ibadan, Oyo State, Adeleke chairs the Division of Cardiology at Benjamin Carson School of Medicine, Babcock University and doubles as a professor of Medicine/Cardiology at Babcock University. He is the President/CEO of Tristate Cardiovascular Institute and heads the Division of Cardiac Catheterization and Interventional Laboratory at University College Hospital, Ibadan.
Adeleke is also the Founder/CEO of Tristate Healthcare system (THS) which manages Tristate Hospital Lekki, Babcock Tristate Heart and Vascular Centre, Tristate Hospital Ibadan, amongst others. Until he relocated to Nigeria, he was the Chief of Cardiology at St. Francis Hospital in Wilmington, Delaware, USA for 10 years, Adeleke spearheaded the opening of the Open-Heart Surgery and Cardiac Catheterisation and Interventional Laboratory which he directed for 12 years before stepping down as director in 2014 and taking up his role at Benjamin Carson School of Medicine.
After spending over 40 years in America, the surgeon, who is from Oyo State, was forced to return to Nigeria after realising that the average life expectancy in Nigeria is 46 years. According to him, people were dying from heart disease, a non-communicable disease which affects certain geographical parts of the population and mainly the middle class and the upper class. Another reason why he said he chose to return home was because it was becoming increasingly difficult to find an interventional cardiologist and this prompted a former Minister of Health to do everything possible to ensure he returned home to render his services.
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