Suburban
West End Clinic has acquired an advanced diagnostic and surgical machine which will enhance the safety and efficiency of cataract removal procedures by surgeons at the institution.
Sifelani Tsiko
The clinic’s manager Pharoah Makarudze told the Herald on Wednesday that the new CataRhex 3 Phaco machine will help surgeons carry out treatment procedures for cataract removals in a more efficient way that reduces costs and healing time for patients.
“We bought a new Phaco machine at a cost of more than US$32 000 as we step up efforts to upgrade our hospital equipment and to modernise our healthcare provision for our clients,” he said.
“The machine has been installed and is now operational. It’s an advanced machine, it’s one of a few available in the country.”
He said nurses, doctors and technicians were now being trained on how to operate the machine.
Previously, surgeons used old techniques which were cumbersome and took patients about a week to heal.
“Using this new Phaco machine removing the cataracts in a patient can take about 15 minutes and a patient’s recovery takes about 24 hours,” said Jean-Luc Neeys, a technical applications specialist who installed the machine at the clinic.
“The machine helps make minute incisions of just 2.8 mm in size in an eye. One of the biggest advantages of the machine is that the entire process is done as an outpatient procedure. It also enables quick rehabilitation and patients can be discharged after the procedure.”
West End Clinic sister-in-charge of theatre – Fadzanayi Chiwanga said using old methods, incision can be 3,2 mm or more and in worst cases can reach even 6mm.
“The new machine will help us attract younger doctors who were trained using modern technologies. It’s an efficient machine that can reduce treatment time and costs to the patient,” she said.
“The procedure can be done in 15 minutes and a patient can be discharged to receive treatment outside the hospital. This reduces pressure at hospitals and recovery time for patients is much shorter. It’s possible to treat one patient every 15 minutes unlike old archaic methods where you need a whole one hour to treat one patient.”
Neeys said the use of lasers to slice and dice cataracts can make Phaco machines even safer and more efficient, since less ultrasound energy is needed to dissolve the material and as a result, less heat is created in the eye.
West End Clinic is owned by a consortium of doctors and is different from West End Hospital run by Premier Service Medical Investments (PSMI).
Africa and Latin America have the highest rates in the world of treatable sight problems, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Conditions like glaucoma or cataracts, which are easily treated in developed countries, often go unattended in many poorer countries that are struggling with lack of equipment and skilled healthcare professionals.
The International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) reports that 161 million people suffer from uncorrected eye problems and of these, 100 million have operable cataracts.
Another 510 million are short-sighted.
WHO estimates indicate that 1.2 percent of the entire population of Africa is blind and that cataract causes 36 percent of this blindness.
If not corrected with surgery, cataract can lead to irreversible vision loss and blindness.
