Recently, some experts from Apollo Hospital, New Delhi, India were in Nigeria to train our doctors on specialized surgeries. One of them, Dr Narasimhan Subramanian, a consultant urologist, spoke to WINIFRED OGBEBO and VICTOR OKEKE on the urology specialty and everything relating to it.
What is urology?
Urology is a branch of medicine which primarily deals with all urine, kidney and reproductive organs-related problems. It is a surgical specialty which deals with diseases of the male and female urinary tract, the male reproductive organs and the kidney. It is a surgical branch where we, surgeons treat these conditions.
Developments have continuously happened in urology over the last hundred years. We are trying to highlight those segments of development in urology which would make patient care easier either in terms of diagnosing the condition early or introducing treatments which are less invasive so that we reduce the pain, the duration of hospitalisation, ensure they return to work early and the amount of pain and the amount of deformity on the scalp becomes negligible.
Similarly, when you look at various cancers, some cancers can be prevented. For instance, you can prevent lung cancers if people reduce smoking and start breathing better. Whereas many other cancers you can’t stop them but what you can do is to diagnose them early. When you diagnose them early, you are catching at a stage where they are curable. The new advances in terms of the blood tests and scans we do make us diagnose these much earlier than you would otherwise understand.
Is such knowledge transferable? Is it something you can transfer to a hospital like the Abuja University Teaching Hospital?
Majority of the knowledge which we have in medicine today is something which we can transfer both by interactions like what we are doing today. What we are doing today is that our own experience of newer techniques and methodologies is being shared with our colleagues in this part of the world.
Some of them may require newer technologies to be available physically here; some of them on the other hand can be done by satellite models.
Let us assume that I have operated a patient from Nigeria in India, I don’t need him to come and see me every time in India. There are the telemedicine systems whereby he can be at anywhere with an access to Skype or Teleconferencing and I can see his medical condition and offer medication as required.
Similarly today, what you find is that the surgical operations which I’m doing in India can be easily viewed through the satellite by colleagues in this part of the world
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