Open-heart surgery: LASUTH performs Nigeria’s first non-surgical closure

Lagos State University Teaching Hospital recorded a new first as it became the first public tertiary health institution in Nigeria to perform Ventricular Septal Defect closure.

VSD is a type of heart procedure that closes a hole between the left and right ventricles of the heart.

The procedure was done on Tuesday, June 20, 2023, at the hospital’s Cardiac Catheterisation Laboratory.

Dr. Oluwaseye Oladimeji, a Consultant Interventional Cardiologist at LASUTH, who revealed in a post on Twitter on Tuesday, June 27, 2023, described the procedure as one being performed on patients born with a hole in the heart.

He further revealed that there are two ways to deal with holes in the heart: “One is to perform an open heart surgery, while the other way, is to do a non-surgical closure,” adding that the surgery “can be done without making an incision in the chest wall and the defect can be closed using a disc-like device.”

He also revealed that patients who undergo the procedure can be discharged two hours after.

The hospital, however, promised to continue to provide quality health solutions to the residents of Lagos.

So far, over 120 procedures have been successfully performed since the inception of the Cardiac Catheterisation Laboratory in the second quarter of 2022.