In his lecture entitled: “Current Concepts in the Management of the Acute Trauma Patient” a Consultant Orthopaedic & Trauma Surgeon, Dr. Choji  Chungjoe, who described trauma as neglected disease of the modern world said initiating validated approaches early would ensure better outcome in patients with complex trauma.

Chungjoe who noted the complexity of trauma regretted that middle and low-income developing countries like Nigeria do not see trauma as disease of importance.

He maintained that trauma  represents one of the major factors for the death of patients, arguing that introduction of standardised protocols in  developed countries and many developing countries has reduced trauma-related morbidity and mortality.

“The gold standard since the 1990s remains the ATLS protocol. The complex management of acute trauma patients can be optimized by adopting standardised and validated approaches using well established algorithms such as the ATLS programme.  This has proved hugely successful in lowering morbidity and mortality but it’s still a work in progress that has spawned newer concepts that are further improving outcome”

Speaking on the theme, “Election Violence: “Impact on the Health Sector and Society at Large” President, NOHIL-ARD, Dr. Idowu Deifa  said: “From the health perspective, when election violence occurs,  patients suffer a great deal of trauma, and as clinicians managing them, we also need to update ourselves for a better outcome. Apart from the violence we decided to also educate ourselves on the current standards acceptable worldwide as the gold standard for management of these patients when they come in as trauma patients.”

Deifa who further stated that the association has continued to update themselves for better services said recently they worked with advanced trauma life support protocol which helps to ensure that patients in a salvageable period can come alive from trauma.

According to him, some patients who have potentials of surviving the trauma if time is lost and expertise is not well applied may also become irreplaceable and irreversible damages. “Advanced trauma life protocol is essentially what we use in order to help save these patients.

“Management of trauma is about what you can get anywhere in the world because in our centre we have four trauma specialists in addition to others in orthopaedic surgery who also have  background knowledge of trauma patients.

“In orthopaedic hospital, I can say that we are the foremost trauma centre , other trauma centres in the country send their doctors to us for more training. We are upgrading to gain more knowledge,” he stressed.

Further, Deifa lamented the acute shortage of trauma experts, appealing to the Federal government to continue to encourage doctors who just graduated to go into different fields of medicine to specialise and make the country a better place for healthcare as well as reduce  brain drain and the tax money being taken abroad in the name of specialist care.

Source: Vanguard Online