Saved by Kisubi Hospital

Heart disease patient narrates experience at new surgery

Kampala, Uganda | PATRICIA AKANKWATSA | Johannes De Heer can manage to smile and chuckle a bit although he has just undergone a heart surgery. The 61-year old got a heart attack on Jan. 11 and was rushed to Naguru Hospital in Kampala for first aid.

The plan was to move him to the Uganda Heart Institute in Mulago National Referral and Specialized Hospital for further treatment. He says doctors at Naguru said that they would contact Mulago and organize a team to handles his case. But it did not happen.

“After four hours of waiting, it dawned on us that there was no team to work on me since it was a Saturday. The heart institute doesn’t open on weekends,” he says.

Johannes says as they were discussing, some of his wife’s friends from International Hospital Kampala (IHK) told them to try Kisubi Hospital because they “had heard that there is a heart centre’.

“At this point I had lost hope because they say after a heart attack, it takes five-six hours for the tissues of the heart to die if there is no intervention,” he says.

He spent a desperate night at Naguru Hospital until the next day, Sunday, when he was driven to Kisubi Hospital. He was received by Dr Sanmath Shetty, an adult international cardiologist at the hospital.

“He checked me and said that since I was still feeling pain in the chest, the tissues hadn’t died yet and I was taken straight to the cath lab,” narrates Johannes.

Cath Lab is short for Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory. It is a special laboratory where doctors perform minimally invasive tests and procedures to diagnose and treat cardiovascular diseases.

“The procedures performed in a cardiac cath lab almost always involve tiny, flexible tubes, called catheters, which can be used instead of surgery, to access the heart and blood vessels,” Shetty explains.

“A cath lab has special imaging equipment used to see the arteries and check how well blood is flowing to and from the heart. This information helps the care team to diagnose and treat blockages and other problems in the arteries,” he adds.

The Cath Lab at Kisubi Hospital is new, having opened in December 2019. It is the second in the country after the one at The Uganda Heart Institute in Mulago.

Before Johannes, the hospital had done just on closed heart surgery in December 2019. Johannes was the second. Both were successful.

“I was operated and spent three nights at the hospital. Unfortunately or fortunately, I had another blocked artery which was able to be seen during the screening. So I went back after two weeks and another surgery was done,” he adds.

Kisubi Hospital at the moment only does closed heart surgeries or procedures that do not require doing incisions on the chest.

Shetty says closed heart surgery is advantageous because it heals faster.

“It may take between 24-48 hours to heal unlike the open heart surgeries that may take up to 2-4 weeks,” he adds.

Meanwhile over 180 patients have been screened at the Kisubi Hospital cath lab since it opened.

Dr. Robert Saaba, the general manager of Kisubi Hospital, says that the cath lab is part of a major plan to build a heart treatment centre.

“This is phase one of the heart treatment centre. In phase two which we will embark on next year, we shall expand the block and have an operational theatre for open heart surgeries,” Saaba says.

Dr. Saaba says that although they have not yet completed the heart treatment centre, they still do day today treatment of heart diseases and screening on a daily basis.