By tweeting the details of an operation that was performed
on a young girl live on Tuesday, the National Hospital, Abuja, may have
expanded the meaning of open heart surgery.
In a total of 13 posts, including two photographs and a
short video, the hospital authority ensured that every stage of the operation,
from the beginning to the end, was relayed to its followers on Twitter.
The surgical operation, described as a ventricular septal defect
repair, was conducted on an eight-year-old girl with a hole in the heart from
birth.
For the online community, what matters is not the
technicality of surgery but the hospital’s decision and courage to broadcast a
serious medical situation of this nature live on Twitter.
At a point, somebody wanted to know what the hospital would
have done if the operation had resulted in the death of the patient.
Yet, filled with suspense, the tweets continued, announcing,
“Happening now: open heart surgery. Live at the Trauma Centre, National
Hospital, Abuja. The procedure is a repair of a hole in the heart. The patient
is an eight year-old girl and the ailment is congenital – she was born with
it.”
Those who saw the first tweets after they hit the cyberspace
were, perhaps, not so sure that the posts were not meant as a joke, especially
since the Twitter handle was not verified.
But more tweets soon followed, saying “The surgeons are
prepping and draping the patient in preparation for surgery”; as well as a
photograph showing a hospital bed, the surgeons performing the operation and
the patient.
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| Ongoing open heart surgery |
The tweets revealed what the doctors were doing at every
stage of their assignment and the condition of the patient. And there was a
four-second video to show that the repaired heart was fine.
The rest of the
tweets were mostly scary and educative at the same time.
“The surgeon is
performing a median sternotomy – opening the chest of the patient. The patient
is about to go on a bypass. The bypass machine is a temporary replacement of
the heart before it is stopped.
“The bypass machine creates a new route for blood to
circulate so that the heart can be stopped. The surgeons have connected the
tubes successfully and the patient is now on a bypass”, they said.
The hospital also continued, “The surgeons are trying to put
a purse string around the right superior pulmonary vein. The corrective
procedure is still being carried out on the heart and everything is going on
fine.
"The heart has
been stopped and the bypass machine continues its functions. Now, a cannula has
been inserted into the RSPV. This is to completely drain the heart of blood”.
At this point, it posted a video showing the patient’s
heart, and wrote, “The heart has been started again successfully and being
tested. The patient has been taken off the bypass machine and the heart takes
over. The patient is being closed up.”
While the online
engagement was going on, some tweeters prayed for the successful restarting of
the heart just as they admired the experts. Others kept reflecting the
consequences of the adventure.
Tweeting via @ambitionistin, one Dream said the process was
“beautiful” to watch. Another tweeter, Bibi Jones, described the tweets as an
“expensive” joke from a serious hospital.
With 61 posts, so
far, the hospital is relatively new on Twitter. Much of its following, which
stood at 660 on Wednesday, joined its Twitter community after the sensational
tweets from the theatre.
Its first tweet –
“Hi, the Twitter page of the National Hospital, Abuja, is now live” – was
published on April 22, 2015.
But, despite its age
on the micro-blogging site, its tweets on one of the most sensitive jobs of a
surgeon have earned the hospital a reputation as one of the most daring
Nigerian institutions on social media.
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