HAND SURGERY AND REHABILITATION PROJECT
YANGON ORTHOPAEDIC AND YANGON GENERAL HOSPITALS
YANGON/MYANMAR
MARCH 7TH – 16TH 2012
Overview
A revisit to these two hospitals and the Department of Physiotherapy and Hand Therapy and the Departments of Orthopaedic and Hand Surgery as a follow up of the previous visits 2001 to 2011 to consult and treat patients in the surgical clinics, the physio and hand therapy clinics and the operation theatres.
To give formal lectures on hand Surgery and Hand Therapy.
Team
Hand Surgeon – Associate Professor W Bruce Conolly
Hand Therapist – Cathy Merry
Course Co-orindators in Myanmar – Professor Thit Lwin, Director of Department of Orthopaedics.
Professor K M Myint – Professor of Hand Surgery
Dr T T Aung and other members of the Hand Surgery Team
Sponsorship
The Australian Hand Surgery Society
Rotary Club of Mosman
Programme
On alternate days there would be a ward round of patients in the Yangon General Hospital followed by a full days operation session which would include fractures and dislocations, correction of joint contractures, tendon transfers for nerve palsy, amputations of a digit or even of the hand and forearm, various types of skin cover after major injury and soft tissue loss, removal of soft tissue and bone tumours.
On alternate days there would be Hand Surgery and Hand Therapy Clinics at the Yangon Orthopaedic Hospital where up to a 100 patients would attend and be treated by the nursing and hand therapy staff.
This would be followed by an afternoon session of formal lectures by Cathy Merry and myself along with a Pathology audit and an x-ray session.
Conclusions
Hand Therapy
There have been great improvements since the first visits by Cathy Merry and Rosemary Prosser in the management of Hand and Upper Limb conditions, and the making of splints and other techniques to prevent and manage joint contractures.
Surgical outpatient clinic
Again the results of the teaching over these ten years was obvious in the increased skills in diagnosis in triage and an overall management of the patients who presented with as before all manner of injuries, infections and conditions including Tuberculosis, Cerebral Palsy, Bone and Soft Tissue Tumours.
The operation theatre technics had improved but there was a severe shortage of equipment such as a power drill which had been donated by the St Luke’s Hospital and Synthes but through lack of maintenance had fallen into a non-functioning mode. The old bit and drill apparatus which we had seen in our first visit was back in use. Likewise there was great need to improve microsurgical facilities even though the current head of the Hand Surgery Professor Myint himself had done many toe to hand transfers.
There was an interest in the possibility of having arthroscopy equipment for the wrist. The problem would be one of maintenance of the equipment.
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