Thank you to Andrew Hodges for providing this report from the Microsurgery Masterclass he attended.
Report on BAPRAS microsurgery masterclass 20-21st May 2019
Andrew Hodges 29th May 2019
Interface generously funded my flight and course fees to enable me to attend the BAPRAS microsurgery master class in Oxford.
We have been performing microsurgery at CoRSU and CORU in Kampala, Uganda since 2005. As described in a paper by Citron, we initially did not have acceptable success rates. However, over the years we have been performing more microsurgery cases (42 in the last year) and have been achieving a higher success rate (91% in the last year).
We have learnt many lessons but still would like to improve the success rate. We also feel that there are many patients who would greatly benefit from microsurgery who presently are not being offered this service.
As we wish to continually improve our success and scope I felt that this course which would attempt to highlight new developments in microsurgery would greatly help our practice at CoRSU.
The course, held in Oxford was extremely stimulating. All aspects of microsurgery were covered including important aspects such as free flap monitoring which has always been challenging in our resource poor setting.
Experts described the challenges and new innovations in microsurgery in all the different subspecialties. Oxford was a good setting for this course as the department has been a leader in the field of microsurgery for many years.
I have come away with some new ideas such as:
- The use of low cost thermal imaging attached to a smart phone for assessment of perforators as well as monitoring of free flaps
- The use of new flaps such as the SCIP flap and the MSAP flap in our practice
- The expansion of free flaps for improved results in burns patients.
I am very grateful to Interface for giving me this opportunity to attend this course.
Andrew Hodges
Reconstructive Surgeon, CoRSU Hospital